


Deja Vu

by Zara_Zee



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Homophobic Language, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pseudoscience, Secret Identity, Temporary Amnesia, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 21:03:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4452290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zara_Zee/pseuds/Zara_Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester has a pretty sweet life. He works in construction; he married his long-time girlfriend, Carmen, straight out of high school; and he’s almost paid off a basic apartment in the Middle District. He may never have left his home district, let alone his home planet, but he’s happy… more-or-less. </p><p>So why does he keep dreaming about the red wastelands of Mars? Why does he know more about the Martian Resistance than he has any right to?  And who do the long, long legs and decidedly male butt that have him waking up achingly hard every morning belong to?</p><p>Maybe Dean just needs a holiday? He couldn’t afford a real one, of course, but maybe he could go to Déjà Vu and get the <i>memories</i> of a holiday implanted; get Mars out of his system.</p><p>Of course, that’s when the trouble <i>really</i> starts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I have borrowed the names and faces of certain actors without their knowledge or approval. Said actors belong to themselves and I have merely cast them in my fiction. Not a word of this is true; I’ve just got them playing parts. Families members mentioned are OCs except where family members may themselves be actors, as I don’t like to cast non-actors in my fictional dramas. I have shamelessly stolen some dialogue from _Total Recall_ (but to quote Marie from _Fan Fiction_ , not enough to get us in trouble ) all credit to the writers. There are also a few lines of dialogue from _Supernatural_ and _Dark Angel_ taken completely out of context and reappropriated because they fit the scene so well and I like to throw in Show easter eggs here and there. Credit, again, to those writers.
> 
> *Loosely based on the 1990 movie _Total Recall_

[ ](http://s51.photobucket.com/user/zarazee71/media/BB%20art%20by%20Riverofwind/title_zpsh9bpyvbf.jpg.html)

 

_His footfalls slap in the hollowed-rock tunnel and the echo is loud. Too loud. The thrum of the big drills and hydraulic excavators is only a distant background hum here, and it doesn’t drown out the sound of their passage. It makes him uneasy._

_This far underground the air is damp and thin and if he wasn’t wearing a mask, every breath would be coating his nostrils, throat and lungs with fine red powder. He keeps his eyes focused on the legs jogging ahead of him. Legs that just won’t quit; long and tapered, several miles at least of denim-clad perfection, topped by an ass you could bounce a nickel off._  [Dean frowns in his sleep. That’s a male ass. Why is he dreaming about a male ass?]

_A shout comes from behind them and they both speed up, zigging and zagging as the soft pop of silenced gun fire sounds, and chips of red rock ricochet off the tunnel walls, slicing and bruising. Damn it. He knew they were making too much noise._

_They round the corner at speed and the denim legs stop. Jay…_ [Jay? Dean mutters in his sleep and rolls over. Who the hell is Jay?] _Jay reaches up with his long arms and yanks the filter cover off the air duct in the tunnel’s ceiling. He hauls himself up into the duct space and Dean’s mouth waters at the sight of all those rippling muscles; all that power._ [Dean’s mouth? Dean’s? That’s not…that’s… Dean tosses and whimpers in bed.]

_“C’mon!” Jay says, his hand reaching down into the tunnel. Dean reaches up and…pain! Agonizing pain! His hand is a sudden mess of shattered bone and blood, with a hole clear though it._

_“Mining Security! Put your hands where I can see them!”_

_Jay is sitting in the air duct, nursing a bloody hand. Dean realizes with a sense of wonder that the bullet shot clear through their joined hands_

_The mask covers Jay’s mouth and nose, and his face is in shadow. Dean wishes he could see what the other man looks like. Just one glimpse before… he turns his head and looks at the group of rapidly-approaching security officers._

_“Go!” he hisses, holding his arms up in surrender and dropping to his knees. “Get out of here, Jay.”_

_Jay leans forward and Dean gets a glimpse of big, sorrowful eyes._

_“No, Jen,_ [Jen? Who’s Jen?] _I’m not leaving you! I—”_

“DEAN!!!”

Dean blinks awake and stares up at Carmen. Her face is inches from his, nose wrinkled, and her dark hair is tumbling into his face. He swats it away. “What?”

Her face twists. “Who’s Jane?”

“Who?”

“Jane!”

“Who’s Jane?”

Carmen glares. “You were calling out her name in your sleep! Who is she, Dean?”

Dean runs a hand over his stubbled chin and licks at his lips. He’d been dreaming. Dreaming about…Dean frowns. It had seemed important. So real. There’d been him. And there’d been…another guy. Jay? Jay. They’d been…mining? On…Mars?

“Dean!”

He scrubs a hand over his face. “Jay. Not Jane. A guy I used to work with.”

Carmen frowns at him. “I don’t remember you talking about a Jay.”

Her tone is still deeply suspicious and Dean can’t even say he doesn’t understand why. The last couple of months, marital relations have been _strained_ , to say the least. Dean remembers their High School days, when he was the power forward on the basketball team and she was the cheerleader who stood at the Apex of the pyramid. They’d fucked like bunnies in the back seat of his Dad’s Impala after every game and when they got married, straight out of High School (not that Dean had actually graduated), the honeymoon period had gone on for several years. Now? Now he can’t even get it up when they’re in bed together and Carmen is convinced he’s got a little somethin’ somethin’ on the side. It wouldn’t be the first time. He’s always had a roving eye, always liked the ladies just a little too much, and Dean remembers his affairs with Lisa, then Cassie and then Lisa again, all too well. 

“Jay’s not important,” Dean says, although his gut tells him that’s a lie. “Just a guy I worked with a long time ago. It was just a stupid, random dream, Carmen.”

“Hmm,” Carmen rolls onto her side and slides a hand down his torso and into his sleep pants. Dean still has a semi from the lust he’d felt staring at Jay’s ass, but it wilts when Carmen grips him hard. She huffs and lets him go, flouncing out of bed and heading for the bathroom. “I was gonna say, seeing as you’re _up_ , how about some fun before you gotta head in to work.” She turns at the door and gives him a withering look. “Maybe you should get some of those pills? You know; the little blue ones that old men use when they can’t perform any more?”

And ain’t that just humiliating? Dean’s thirty years old for fuck’s sake.

\--

The thing of it is, Dean _likes_ being on the tools. His buddy Gordon couldn’t wait to be Leading Hand, actually likes dealing with work orders and time sheets and surveyors from City Hall.  Dean likes the feel of a drill in his hand, likes to see a frame go up, see an apartment block come to life and know that he did that; created something important from scratch; something that people needed.

It’s not a particularly hot day; cloudy and overcast, but he’s worked up a sweat none-the-less. His checked flannel shirt—sleeves rolled up past his elbows—is stuck to his back and his hair is damp under his orange hardhat.  

A hand falls onto his shoulder and Dean reacts without thinking. A blur of movement later Gordon is pinned to the corner post of the frame Dean had been building, with one of Dean’s hands around his neck and the drill wedged under his chin.

Gordon blinks. “Uh…Dean? What the hell, man?”

Dean lowers the drill and moves his hand. Gordon reaches up and dabs at the underside of his chin with his fingertips. He scowls at Dean when he sees the spot of blood on his finger. “Seriously,” he says, “what the fuck?”

Dean rubs at the back of his neck. “Sorry?” he ventures.

Gordon looks him up and down, assessing. “You know,” he says finally, “I wasn’t gonna say anything, but Carmen’s been on the phone to Kirsten a lot lately.”

“Hold the front page,” Dean says dryly, “our wives, who’ve been best friends since the fourth grade, have been gossiping on the phone. Go figure.”

Gordon sighs and shakes his head. “She’s worried about you, man. Says you ain’t been sleepin’. Says you’ve been having bad dreams,” Gordon looks away, his mouth a thin line and his cheeks flushed. He lowers his voice. “Says you don’t wanna touch her no more.”

Dean feels his own neck and face begin to flush.

“You ain’t cheatin’ on her again, are you?” Gordon says. “Because after that bullshit with Lisa…” He trails off and looks at Dean hard.

Dean stares down at his scuffed and dusty brown work boots. He’d been so convinced that Lisa’s kid had been his; had been gutted when the DNA results had come back to say that he wasn’t. He’d been even more gutted a couple of years later when his doctor had told him that the reason Carmen wasn’t getting pregnant was that he was shooting blanks.

“Dean?” Gordon says and Dean can hear the warning in his tone. He remembers the ass-whooping Gordon promised him if he cheated on Carmen again, and the last thing he wants to do is throw down with his best friend.

He lifts his head and meets Gordon’s eyes. “I’m not cheating on Carmen,” he says. “I swear on my mama’s grave.”

His mama died in a house fire when he was four and his daddy never got over it. Gordon knows Dean well enough to know this isn’t an oath he makes lightly.

Gordon holds his gaze and then nods. “Well alright then,” he slings an arm around Dean’s shoulders. “You work too hard, my man. You know what you need? You need a night out with the boys. I’ll call Brad and Dwayne and we’ll meet up after work for a beer at _Kittens_ ,” he waggles his eyebrows. “Nothin’ like a little tabletop dancing to get you in the mood, right Dean?”

Dean flashes him a big, bright, entirely insincere smile. “Right,” he says.

And he _is_ right. Dean remembers countless happy, fun-filled evenings spent in strip clubs with the guys from his old basketball team. So why is his stomach sinking at the thought?

\--

Dean volunteers to go up to the bar to get the next pitcher of beer. Brad, Dwayne and Gordon are all having a hard time peeling their eyes away from the three-breasted dancer who’s currently shaking her bootie on the stage.

Looking at her does nothing to turn Dean on; she just makes him sad. She’s from Mars, the dancer, a descendent of the early Mars colonists. Maybe her ancestors were convicts who were transported to Mars for life to work in the mines. Maybe they were Corrections staff. Or maybe they were Free Settlers, lured out of Earth’s impoverished Lower District and up to Mars by cheap shuttle fares and the promise of free accommodation and a job for life. Of course, life wasn’t necessarily long in those early days. The fumes and the dust from the turbinium ore mines and inadequate ventilation in the Lower Domes often caused fatal illnesses and it triggered a lot of mutations—some more extreme than others—in the colony’s poorer residents.

And wow, where did he pick all that up from? Dean sure as Hell didn’t take Colonial History in High School. Maybe there’d been something on the Holovision recently? On the History Channel, maybe, or Universal Geographic? Cable HV is one of the luxuries Dean is prepared to pay for; Carmen loves to watch Lifestyles of the Upper District and he himself is a huge fan of Dr Sexy, M.D. Sometimes, late at night, when he’s feeling restless and trying to avoid going to bed with Carmen, Dean will channel hop. Maybe he fell asleep to some documentary about Mars one night? Or maybe one of the News stations gave a brief overview of Colonial history to help put the current Troubles into context?

Dean orders a pitcher of Coors and sits on a barstool with his back to the stage while the bartender pours it.

“Not your thing?” the bartender nods at the stage.

Dean shrugs.

“Is it the three tits that don’t trip your trigger?” the bartender asks, “or just the tits in general?”

Dean’s eyes widen. He should say it’s the mutation he doesn’t like, but after last night’s dream and the way his dick had responded to the sight of those long, male legs and rippling arm muscles, he just can’t get the words out. So he says, “What’s a girl from the Lower Domes doing on Earth anyway?”

The bartender puts the pitcher up on the bar and Dean swipes his i-band over the payscan.

“How long were you there?” the bartender asks.

Dean frowns. “How long was I where?”

“Mars.”

Dean laughs. “I’ve never been to Mars, man.”

The bartender inclines his head and regards Dean with a slight frown. “Huh,” he says. “It’s just…most Homeworlders would’ve just said ‘a girl from Mars’ or ‘from the Colonies’. Most Homeworlders wouldn’t know about the Dome hierarchies. Not unless they’d lived in the Colonies for a while.”

Dean stares at him. An uncomfortable prickle starts at the base of his skull and he runs a hand across the back of his neck. “I guess it’s something I picked up from the holo.”

Dean takes the pitcher back to the table and sits, nursing his beer and watching the smudged beer-ring on his coaster with more attention than the activity really warrants.

Gordon eventually notices that Dean is bored and uncomfortable. He scoots his chair toward Dean and leans in close. “Dude,” he says. “You wanna get outta here? Go over to _The Bleachers_ instead?”

“God, yes,” Dean says fervently.

They leave Brad and Dwayne ogling Tittiana and head down the road to the Sports Bar. The holovision is screening Saturday’s Celtics vs Knicks game. Dean sniffs. Of course the Upper District gets their game on the holo. Still, the Bulls vs Bucks game is at least showing on one of the retro flatscreens.  The Lower District games aren’t broadcast at all. Dean frowns. Come to think of it, he’s not sure they even have a Division any more.

Another one of the flatscreens is showing an old football game. Dean has no clue who’s playing and he doesn’t really understand the sport, but he’s impressed as hell by the stadium. He knows that America was a lot bigger before the Fifty Year Storm and the East Coast Tsunami, but still, he can’t quite get his head around having enough space to dedicate such a big portion of it to a sport. He’s heard rumors that they still have football stadiums in the Upper District, but Dean doesn’t put much stock in them. Of course, it’s not quite so crowded there; only a small portion of America’s 900 million people live in the Upper District, so maybe it’s true.

“So Dean,” Gordon slams a cold bottle of Coors onto the table in front Dean. “What’s goin’ on in that head of yours, man?”

Dean picks up the bottle, wetting his fingers on the condensation dripping down its side.

“Just wondering if they really still have football stadiums in the Upper District,” he says with a shrug, before chugging back a mouthful of ice cold beer.

Gordon stares at him for a moment and then barks out a laugh. “You are somethin’ else, Winchester.”

Dean smiles at him, bright and empty. It’s his ‘move along folks, nothing to see here smile’, the one he uses to convince people that he’s nothing more than a pretty face. Dean remembers practicing it in front of the mirror, back when…he frowns…back when…the memory is hazy and when he reaches for it, a sudden, sharp headache has him losing his grip on the bottle and slapping a hand to his forehead.

“Dean?” Gordon’s cautious voice is distant and Dean has to bite down hard on his instinctive response, which is to snap that _that’s not his name_ , because what the hell?

Some innate sense of self-preservation warns him to downplay things with Gordon.

“Brain freeze,” he says. “Man, that beer’s cold!”

Gordon laughs, but it sounds forced.

Dean turns his gaze to the holo just in time for play to stop for half time. The images freeze, and then fade, and a bedroom under a glass dome at the bottom of the ocean pops up. Outside the dome colorful fish swim around, and on the bed, a pasty, balding man lounges next to a young woman with long blonde hair and really big tits.

_‘Do you dream of a vacation at the bottom of the ocean?’_ A voice asks.

The bedroom and the colorful fish disappear and the balding man is now alone in a Lower District bedsit, surrounded by a pile of bills

_‘...but you can't float the bill?’_

The image fades and in its place, Elysium Mons appears, with a figure in a space suit climbing it.

‘ _Have you always wanted to climb the mountains of Mars...’_

The mountain fades and the figure in the space suit becomes an old man staggering up a staircase.

_‘...but now you're over the hill? Then come to Déjà Vu Incorporated...’_

The staircase fades and a man in a white lab coat stands in an office, with the Déjà Vu   logo emblazoned on the wall behind him.

_‘...where you can buy the memory of your perfect vacation,’_ the holo image says, _‘cheaper, safer, and better than the real thing. So don't let life pass you by.  Call Déjà Vu.  For the memory of a lifetime.’_

Beside him, Gordon snorts. “Goddamn brain-butchers,” he says. “Now I know I ain’t the sharpest tool in the box, but ain’t no way I’d let those assholes mess about inside my melon,” he drums his fingers on the table in front of Dean and leans forward. “A guy on this one site I was at, years ago, went to them for some harem holiday, ended up lobotomized! _Lobotomized_!”

“No shit?” Dean says. He toys with the label on his beer bottle. “I was thinking maybe me and Carmen could take a Déjà Vu holiday. Maybe a Saturn Cruise?”

Gordon shakes his head vigorously. “No,” he says. “No, no, no, no, no. Bad idea, Dean. Bad idea. Do not go to Déjà Vu. Do not let those assholes mess with your head. Promise me, Dean. Promise me you won’t go!”

Dean presses the beer bottle against his lips and tips it back. He watches Gordon’s wide, intense eyes as he drinks and then he lowers the bottle and sighs. “Alright. Sheesh. I won’t go to Déjà Vu.”

Even as he says it, Dean knows it’s a lie.

\--  

Carmen is a nurse. She works rotating shifts. She’s on afternoon shift this week, which is by far Dean’s favorite shift because it means she’s gone by the time he gets home from work and when she gets back, a little before midnight, he can pretend to be asleep. It’s not that he doesn’t _like_ his wife; she’s a pretty cool chick. She understands him, knows better than to try to feed him asparagus, respects his love of cheeseburgers and has good taste in both music and movies. He just…he doesn’t feel it any more. He remembers being attracted to her, but now…when he’s with her, the pressure to perform, to feel something he just doesn’t feel, to live up to those memories, is overwhelming and it’s just easier if he’s asleep (or at least pretending to be) when she comes to bed.

Dean dumps his hardhat on the hallstand, before unlacing his steel-toed boots and putting them up on the shoe rack. He wanders into the kitchen and opens the fridge. The leftovers from last night’s Bolognese sauce are sitting in a pot on the middle shelf; just enough for him to finish off for his supper. He tears a beer from a cardboard six pack and goes to open it with his ring before realising that he’s not wearing a ring and…come to think on it, he doesn’t remember ever having worn one. Dean frowns. So why had that movement been so instinctive? Dean chases after memories that just won’t come to him and gets a sharp, splitting headache for his troubles. He gives up with a sigh and heads for the living room, plopping down onto the sofa and putting his feet up on the coffee table with defiant relish. Carmen hates him putting his feet up on the coffee table.

“Activation code 494,” Dean says. Nothing happens. He frowns at the holo stage and tries again, but the holovision still doesn’t activate.

When Dean eventually tracks down the instruction booklet—half an hour later—he finds the activation code written in Carmen’s loopy scrawl on the first page of the troubleshooting section. The code is 147. Huh. Dean frowns. What the hell? All of a sudden 147 is the only holo activation code he can remember using and Dean takes his feet off the table, puts his beer down onto it and cradles his head in his hands. Why had that other number seemed so familiar? Why had it been the number on the tip of his tongue, dragged from his subconscious when he wasn’t really thinking about it? Maybe Gordon’s right. Maybe he’s working too hard. Maybe he should think seriously about taking a vacation.

“Activation code 147” The holovision springs into a very close approximation of life and Dean picks up his beer and leans back. Of course there’s nothing on worth watching at this time of day: _Spaceport Security_ is showing some dumb kid from the Lower District getting picked up for drug trafficking by psychics; mutants, of course, because all psychics are. Dean shakes his head and drains his beer.

“Idiot,” he mutters. Because, really, you’d have to be completely insane to try slipping anything past the psychics. And it’s not like everyone doesn’t know they work spaceport security. The kid has a sob story, of course; a dying mom and three little sisters, and the offer of one hundred credits and a free trip on a Saturn cruiser had been sufficient lure to have him taking the risk. The whole thing leaves a sour taste in Dean’s mouth and his skin itches with the desire to _do_ something. Not that he can. After all, what can a High School drop out with a GED and a give’em hell attitude do for anyone?

_Spaceport Security_ fades out and a woman in a bright pink ski suit skis to a stop next to a flock of penguins.

_‘Would you like to ski Antarctica...’_ says the voiceover.

The scene fades and the woman is now in an office, surrounded by paperwork and employees all demanding decisions.

_‘...but you're snowed under with work?’_

Dean rolls his eyes. “Goddamn annoying Déjà Vu commercials.”

He uses the opportunity for a bathroom break and when he gets back an earnest Spaceport Security Officer is explaining directly to the camera that psychic shielding masks aren’t anything like as common as the movies make out, and that they certainly don’t explode like you sometimes see in movies.   

“They could,” Dean mutters, “if they were made from Semtex. And they’d be undetectable if the Semtex was manufactured without a tagging agent.”

Dean frowns. What’s with all the random facts that he wasn’t aware he even knew just popping into his head? Still, plastic explosives are used in demolitions. Plenty of people who work on building sites know about them. This is hardly a startling, unexplainable revelation. And things exploding? Totally awesome. He probably bent the ear of a demolitions guy on a building site some lunchtime, that’s how he knows about Semtex.

Dean tells himself that everything is fine and goes to heat up his supper.

\--

_The man is a silhouette against a curved expanse of glass. Beyond the glass, the terrain is red and rocky, but Dean barely has eyes for it. The man is leaning up against the glass, looking out, and he’s tall; taller than Dean. His messy brown hair is shoulder-length and his legs…Dear God…his legs go on forever. And that ass? Dean could stare at it all day and not get bored._

_“Do you really think we can do it, Jen?” the man says, voice husky._

_“I know we can,” Dean hears his own voice reply._

_The man sighs and half turns. His face is backlit by red-dust diffused sunlight and the way he’s leaning against the glass reminds Dean of the way the hookers in Venusville display themselves in their red-lit windows. It’s that, Dean decides that has his dick hardening in his pants. Not the way the man looks at him, not his strong jaw, not his wide, high cheekbones, not his catlike, multi-colored eyes which are looking at Dean with such love and desire. Not any of that._  [Dean twitches in his sleep, his eyelids moving rapidly _.] Dean moves toward the man as if pulled by gravity. He gets right up in his personal space and then fists his hands in the man’s shirt and pulls him forward. The man comes willingly and Dean’s lips crash into his, kissing hard and desperate. Their tongues duel and they share spit and it’s messy and dirty and so Goddamn hot that Dean needs friction on his dick right-the-hell-now. He grinds against the man and finds him hard and every bit as desperate. The man moans into his mouth and then pulls his lips away, panting hard as he continues to rut frantically against Dean. “Need you, Jen,” he says. “Need you to slide in and fuck me hard right now. Need to feel you inside me. Wanna feel it for days, I—”_

Dean rockets awake, his slapped cheek stinging, and he has Carmen pinned before he’s properly awake.

“Get off me,” Carmen says, her pupils large with fear.

Dean gets off her and sits up. His boxers are sticky.

Carmen sits up slowly. “You’re disgusting,” she says, pulling their green-patterned quilt up to her chin and shivering. “We haven’t had sex for six weeks,” a single tear rolls down her cheek. “And you’re rubbing one out in your sleep.”

Dean feels the flush of shame from the roots of his hair all the way down his neck to his chest.  “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “If it’s any consolation, I didn’t know I was doing it. I was asleep.”

“You were dreaming,” Carmen’s tone is flat and accusing.

“I don’t remember,” Dean lies. He slips out of bed and snags a clean pair of boxers on his way to the bathroom. He cleans up with toilet paper and then sits on the john with his head in his hands and tries to control his breathing. Okay. So. He’s dreaming about a guy. It’s turning him on. He thinks about the dream he just had, about where things were heading in that dream, and his cock starts to get interested again. He thinks about Carmen, lying in their bed in a silk-and-lace pink nightie, and the interest flags. So. He’s…he’s. Fuck.

Carmen is still awake when he gets back to the bedroom. He sits on the edge of the bed with his back to her and his head, once again, in his hands. He feels the bed dip and hears shuffling and then Carmen presses against his back, a hand on his shoulder.

“Talk to me, Dean,” she says. “I like to think I know you pretty well, but lately? Lately you’re just not yourself.”

Dean licks at his lips and then runs a hand over his mouth. He glances at their wedding photo—bright smiles and misted edges in a fat silver frame—and then bows his head and closes his eyes briefly before straightening and turning and pulling Carmen around to sit next to him.      

“I’ve been having these dreams,” he says.

Carmen’s eyes flit searchingly across his face. “About what?”

Dean bites at his bottom lip. “A guy.”

Carmen frowns. “And what do you and this guy do in your dreams?”

Dean lowers his head again. He rubs at the back of his neck and then glances up at Carmen, his expression sheepish.

Carmen stares at him, her brows furrowed and eyes confused. And then they widen and her mouth twitches. “Omigod!” she says. “Really? _Really_?”

She doesn’t seem upset, just very amused, so Dean ventures a self-deprecating smile.

“So,” Carmen purses her lips. “Is this…are you…coming out to me, Dean Winchester?”

“No,” he says immediately. He frowns. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

Carmen grins. And then she throws her head back and laughs, full-bodied and deep.

“Go to sleep, Dean. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

And Dean does sleep. Better than he has in weeks.

\--

Carmen is frying bacon and eggs when Dean edges into the kitchen.

“God that smells good,” he says and Carmen smiles.

“Sit down,” she says. “You’ve got time to eat before you head into work.”

Dean slides onto a white plastic dining chair and activates the flatscreen in the kitchen. “Activate Newsfeed,” he says.

The wall beside the kitchen table bursts into color, a handsome bearded man striding through a spaceport, the high windows on either side of him revealing a hazy red sky.

_‘…if the rebel attacks continue, Governor Morgan says that Martian Security will have no choice but to shut down the Pyramid Mine—’_

“Activate beach scene,” Carmen says sharply.

The wall beside the kitchen table becomes a calming blue sea lapping at white sandy shores that are lined with palm trees.

“Hey!” Dean says. “I was watching that!”

“Yeah,” Carmen rolls her eyes. “No wonder you’re so stressed out that you’re doubting your sexual orientation. Whatever problems they’re having with the rebels, Governor Morgan will sort it out. He always does,” she puts a plate of bacon, eggs, hashbrowns and grilled tomato in front of him. “Eat your breakfast; relax; stop stressing about the state of galactic politics and,” she leans down and kisses him on the cheek, “remember that I love you, no matter how crazy you get.” She straightens up, ruffles his hair and then yawns. “I’m going back to bed. Can you wait up for me tonight? I might be able to get off a little early, get Kirsten to cover for me.”

Dean smiles and nods and says sure. He’s not surprised that she’s in denial about what he told her last night. Truth be told, he’s kind of in denial himself. If he really was into dick, you’d think he would’ve noticed a little sooner. He was jacking off pretty regularly from the age of twelve and he lost his virginity at fourteen and as far back as he can remember it’s always been big soft breasts that turned him on the most. Suddenly waking up one day at thirty years of age and deciding long legs and a masculine chest turns you on more? Yeah, he’s not surprised his wife doesn’t believe him. Dean puts the news back on with a sigh.

\--

Gordon’s piercing whistle interrupts the white-noise buzz of Dean’s drill, and Dean downs tools with a grin, adjusting his hardhat and wiping a dusty hand across his sweaty brow before heading over to where his buddy has half a dozen pizza boxes and four cans of soda resting on top of a pallet of steel beams. Dwayne and Brad join them from the other side of the site and they sit and eat, chatting amiably about nothing, until Dean says, “D’you think Morgan’ll really close the Pyramid Mine?”

There’s a moment of silence and then Brad shrugs. “Politics, man. I don’t really give a shit.” 

“You’ll give a shit if we start having brownouts again,” Dean says. “They’ve been havin’ em in the Lower District ever since Morgan reduced the Mine’s output. If he stops production altogether, how long do you think it’ll be until the Middle District’s affected too?”

Dean’s workmates look decidedly uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” Dwayne mutters after a moment. “Well maybe those fuckin’ rebel scum should pull their heads outta their asses. They got it better up there in their fancy Domes than folks’ve got it in the Lower District. Maybe they should just be grateful and shut the fuck up.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah? When were you on Mars, douchebag?”

“When were _you_?” Gordon interjects, his eyes cold.

Dean rolls his eyes. “I ain’t never been on Mars,” he says. “And neither has Dwayne,” he hesitates, not quite sure how to put into words the feeling of wrongness that he feels in his gut. “Just seems to me that Morgan’s got a helluva a lot of power,” he says slowly, “controlling all the turbinium ore. Maybe we oughta be worried.”

“You sound like a rebel sympathizer,” Brad says sharply and Dean realizes that he’s on dangerous ground.

He helps himself to a slice of pizza and then grins, wide-eyed and innocent. “Hey,” he says, “we get blackouts and Carmen won’t be able to watch _Lifestyles of the Upper District._ And let me tell you man,” he points the slice at Brad for emphasis. “There are no words for how unbearable my life will become if she doesn’t get to watch her show. I’m not a rebel sympathiser. I’m totally motivated by self-interest.”

The guys all laugh and the tension eases, but Dean notices that Gordon keeps a close eye on him for the rest of the day and what the hell is up with that? Dean’s starting to think that maybe he’s getting a little paranoid. Maybe he _really_ does need a holiday. Maybe he’ll stop by Déjà Vu after work and pick up a brochure.


	2. Chapter 2

Gordon wants to head into Sector Nine for drinks again.

“C’mon, man,” he cajoles. “Our wives are on afternoon shift. What’ve you got to do that’s better, huh?”

Dean suspects that Carmen has put him up to this. He suddenly imagines the conversation; Kirsten telling Gordon that Carmen told her that Dean is questioning his sexuality. He goes hot, then cold, and rubs a hand across the back of his neck. Dean remembers how he and Gordon would cruelly insult and torment the boys they thought might be gay, back when they were in high school. The memories make him flush with shame while his stomach flops with queasiness. Hanging out with Gordon is the last thing he wants to do right now, but he feels like he doesn’t have a choice. Gordon is watching him intently and Dean isn’t sure whether Gordon is looking for signs that he’s queer, signs that he’s cheating on his wife or signs that he’s a rebel sympathizer. So he gives Gordon a big, wide, meaningless smile and says, “Sure. Let’s go.”

They go to _The Bleachers_ again and Dean buys the first round. His hand is aching, the way it always does when it’s going to rain and as Dean massages it he finds himself recalling the dream he’d had a few nights back, the one where he’d been shot in the hand. In reality it had been a nail gun that had shot him in the hand; it’d still hurt like fuck, though, and he’d been laid up for months while the damn thing healed. 

He’s still waiting for the bartender’s attention when the holo and all the flatscreens flash with the words ‘breaking news’. A grim-faced newscaster tells the room solemnly that Governor Morgan has halted production at the Pyramid Mine after yet another episode of sabotage by the MRA.

“Goddamn Mars Resistance Army,” a man at the bar growls.      

Dean frowns. That doesn’t sound right. He’s sure MRA doesn’t stand for Mars Resistance Army, but he can’t remember what it does stand for.  He finally gets the bartender’s attention and orders a couple of Coors. Around him, people curse the rebels and speculate about brownouts, blackouts and who’s likely to be laid off when Earth runs out of its turbinium ore stockpile.

“There’s your Goddamn rebels for you,” Gordon says when Dean hands him his beer. He raises the bottle to the holo in derisive salute. “Fuckers,” he says.

“What does MRA stand for?” Dean asks.

Gordon’s brow furrows. “Martian Resistance Army, I think. Why?”

Dean shrugs. “What did they do? I couldn’t hear from back there,” he waves at the bar.

“Destroyed part of the mine’s ventilation system,” Gordon says. “Made it unsafe for the workers down there. Assholes.”

 It all feels _wrong_. Off. Unsettling. Dean’s gut is telling him that the MRA would never put the lives of mine workers in jeopardy, but he has no idea why he suddenly feels so strongly about this. He’d never even given the Rebellion on Mars a second thought until a few weeks ago.

“So this Rebellion,” he says to Gordon. “It’s gotta have a leader, right?”

“I guess,” Gordon picks at the label on his beer bottle, “but no-one knows who it is.”

A big bald guy with colorful tattooed sleeves leans across from the next table and says, “You hear names sometimes: The Jackal; the Angel; the Boyking. But no-one knows who they are or why they’re important.”   

Dean’s scalp begins to prickle and his eyeballs throb. He runs a hand across his face and then joins in with Tattoo-Guy and Gordon as they laugh and joke about the stupid names that the Rebels are apparently using. His headache gets worse.

“Hey Gordon,” he says, “I’m gonna go home. My damn head’s killing me.”

Gordon’s face clouds with suspicion, but Dean must look every bit as shit as he feels, because the look softens immediately and Gordon pats him on the shoulder. “Don’t go gettin’ sick on me Winchester; we gotta make sure we get this apartment block up before the electricity around here gets cut off.”

Dean nods and smiles and weaves his way through the crowd in the bar and out into the crowd in the street. At least outside the air is fresher, and the breeze might bring the stink of the fish market across from Chinatown, but it also blows away the cobwebs in his mind and the pounding in his head recedes a little.  

Sector Nine is a business district. Markets, shops, offices, bars, schools, the hospital; they’re all located in Sector nine.  Steel-and-shatterproof-glass skyscrapers, one hundred floors tall, are interspersed with smaller, pre-Storm brick and concrete buildings that had been sturdy enough to survive fifty years of near-constant battering by hurricanes, tornadoes and miscellaneous super-storms. The older buildings are weather-worn and crumbling, but Dean likes them. They’ve got character; personality; unlike the modern buildings where the focus is on cheap, fast, simple construction and functionality. 

Chinatown comprises six four-story squat, square concrete buildings, three on either side of the road, with a road-spanning gold-and-red Dragon Gate leading into the area and red Chinese lanterns strung across the street. There are brightly-colored signs in Mandarin everywhere and at night the whole place is dazzling-lit by an array of neon signs and digital billboards.

The rain that’s been threatening finally starts to fall, a soft, barely-there drizzle that hardly manages to wet the sidewalk, but dampens Dean’s hair and face just fine. He ducks under the awning of Chen’s Noodle Bar and then figures that a bowl of Chow Mein wouldn’t go astray. Once he’s been served, he finds himself a spot by the wall and leans back against it with his feet crossed at the ankles and the duffle bag with his work stuff in it on the ground beside him. He eats quickly, working the chopsticks like a pro, and watches the people hurrying past. A guy in a suit slows down as he approaches Dean. He raises an eyebrow and inclines his head toward the alley in between the buildings. Dean flushes red and glares at him until he passes. As if he would cheat on Ja— … Carmen. As if he would cheat on _Carmen_.  What the actual _fuck_? Dean tosses his noodle bowl in a nearby trash can. He really _must_ be losing his mind if he’s being loyal to a guy from a _dream_ rather than his wife.

The sky above him lights up with a Déjà Vu commercial. It’s the one about the guy who’s too old to climb Olympus Mons again. There’s an address, a flashing neon arrow and a barcode at the end of the commercial, and Dean figures what the hell? He holds his i-band up to the barcode until it gives its _download complete_ beep, and then he follows the GPS instructions to the front door of Déjà Vu’s Middle District office.

The salesperson is dressed like a nurse. She’s blonde and pretty and wearing a lot of make-up, and Dean flirts with her as a matter of course, but his heart’s not really in it. He should want to bang her; she’s exactly his type; but he doesn’t want to. At all.

“I’m thinking about a holiday memory,” he glances at her nametag. “Tiffany. Maybe a trip to Mars?”

Tiffany wrinkles her nose. “Mars. Right. To be honest, if outer space is your thing, I’d recommend a Saturn cruise,” she flicks her hair. “Everybody raves about ‘em!”

Dean licks his lips and considers it. “No,” he says. “I think I’d really like to go to Mars.”

Tiffany sighs and wiggles to the brochure rack on her very high heels. She pulls off a brochure.

“Let's see...the basic Mars package will cost you just nine hundred and ninety-nine credits.  That's for two full weeks of memories, complete in every detail. A longer trip'll cost you just a wee bit more, because you’ll need a deeper implant.”           

Dean asks her what’s in the two week package and she thumbs through the brochure before smiling and saying: “First of all, Sir, when you go Déjà Vu, you get nothing but first class memories: a private cabin on the shuttle; a deluxe suite at the Hilton; plus all the major sights:  Mount Pyramid, the Grand Canals, and of course...” she blushes, “Venusville.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “And how _real_ does it seem?”

“As real as any memory in your head,” Tiffany says earnestly. “I mean, what are memories but the ability to recall stored information? Your memory doesn’t care _how_ the information got into your brain.”

She shakes her head at Dean’s skeptical look. “Honestly, Sir, your brain won't know the difference.  Guaranteed, or your money back.

“Uh huh,” Dean runs a hand across the back of his neck. “And what about the guy you lobotomized. Did he get a refund?”

Tiffany rolls her eyes. “That’s an urban legend,” she says. “Propaganda spread by the Spacelines because they’re losing market share. The reality is that traveling with Déjà Vu is safer than getting on a rocket,” she hands the brochure to Dean. “There are some statistics on that in the brochure. Besides,” she runs her fingertips up his arm, “a real holiday's a pain in the ass:  lost luggage, lousy weather, crooked taxi drivers, a nagging wife.” There’s a hint of a question there at the end and Dean nods.  Tiffany sighs. “When you go with Déjà Vu, everything's perfect.  You don’t even have to take the nagging wife. So whaddaya say? Shall we book you in for a Mars escape?”

Dean thinks about it; about his general restlessness and dissatisfaction with life.

“Sure,” he says. “Why not?”

Tiffany beams and scuttles about getting paperwork ready for him to read and sign.  He walks out of the office half an hour later with a booking for a virtual trip to Mars, which he’ll take in two days’ time.   

Dean’s earpiece chimes as he’s walking to the train station and he swipes a finger over his i-band to answer it. It’s Carmen, wanting to know when he’ll be home because she managed to get off work early.

\--    

Dean and Carmen live in Sector Twelve, a residential district.  Because his construction job requires Dean to move around to different job sites, he has a Seven Sector Pass which means he can swipe out at any train or tram stop from Sector Nine to Sector Fifteen without triggering a security alert. Carmen only has a Two Sector Pass; she can only swipe out at Sectors Nine and Twelve.  Dean relishes the relative freedom that his pass gives him, but he still misses the Impala and the way things used to be before cars were banned in the Middle and Lower Districts because they caused too much pollution.  Nowadays, people get around by walking or by electric trams and trains.  If the power goes out, pretty much everything grinds to a halt. Dean frowns as he picks his way through the crowded street; why can’t his work buddies see how much power Governor Morgan wields, not only on Mars, but also on the Homeworld?

He takes the train home and spends the evening watching HV with Carmen. She snuggles against him and he feels uncomfortable. She kisses him and he tries, he does, but eventually he has to push her away.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I just can’t.”

Carmen pouts. “Don’t you love me any more, baby?”

Dean can’t answer her and she gets up with a sob and flounces into their bedroom, slamming the door shut.

Dean goes and gets a beer. He stops by their bedroom on the way back to the living room, planning, maybe, to knock, to go in and offer her… he’s not really sure what. He pauses, though, when he hears her talking on the phone in a low, urgent tone. He can’t hear every word she’s saying, just snatches: “…not what I signed up for… fucking gay… can’t connect… do…if he wants us to split up?”

She’s probably talking to Kirsten. Dean lets his head thunk quietly against the door. Gordon is going to make his life a living Hell tomorrow.

“Did you know?” Dean hears Carmen say. “Did you think it would be _funny_?”

And that? Makes no sense. _He_ didn’t even know, so how could _Kirsten_ have known?

He goes back to the living room and sits down on the sofa.

Does he want them to split up? He’s not happy, that’s for damn sure. Dean sits and thinks for a good long while. Eventually Carmen comes and stands awkwardly in the living room door way. “Are you coming to bed?” she asks.

Dean scratches at his eyebrow. “Maybe I should take the couch?”

“You don’t have to.”

He doesn’t really want to; the couch is far too short for him; but he’s going to feel awkward lying next to his wife, with both of them knowing that, suddenly, he can’t stand the thought of touching her.

“I just want to keep an eye on you,” she says, her tone and expression earnest, “make sure you’re okay.”

His surprise must show on his face, because her expression morphs into one of sadness. “We’ve been together a long time, Dean. Surely our relationship’s about more than just sex?”

Dean doesn’t have it in him to argue with that so he follows her wordlessly into their bedroom.

\--

Between Carmen’s caring concern and Gordon keeping a firm eye on him, at the obvious behest of his wife, Dean doesn’t get a moment to himself for the next two days. He actually has to sneak away from Gordon to make his Déjà Vu appointment.

Tiffany shows him through to Dr Curtis Armstrong, and Dean takes one look at the smug-looking bearded man sitting behind the desk and dislikes him on the spot.

“So, Dean,” Dr Armstrong says as Dean sits opposite him. “You’ve booked a standard trip to Mars.”

“Yeah,” Dean does his best to smile, but it just feels like he’s baring his teeth.

“Let me ask you a question, Dean,” Armstrong leans forward and lowers his voice conspiratorially. “What is exactly the same about every single vacation you have ever taken?”

Dean has no clue where Armstrong is going with this, so he produces another insincere smile. “I give up.”

Armstrong’s smile is sickeningly smarmy. “You!” he crows, “ _You're_ the same. No matter where you go, it's always you.”

Dean finds that he really wants to reach across the desk and rip the man’s lungs out.

“Okay,” he says, slow and fake-friendly, “so how do I go about not being me?”

Armstrong’s smile brightens.  “You take a vacation from yourself. It’s the latest thing in travel. We call it the ‘Ego Trip’.”

Ego trip? Seriously? Dean isn’t interested and he says as much.              

Armstrong steeples his hands on the desk in front of him and looks down at Dean with a doe-eyed benign expression.

“Don’t be so quick to dismiss this, Dean. We can offer you a choice of alternative identities for the duration of your trip,” Armstrong hands him a brochure and Dean begins to flip through it, curious despite himself. “That’s it,” Armstrong encourages. “Take a look and see if anything tickles your fancy. Think about it, Dean. Why go to Mars as a tourist when you can go as a playboy or a famous jock or—”

“Secret agent. How much is that?”

Armstrong scrunches up his face and giggles in a way that’s really disconcerting.

“Ooh,” he says. “That’s a good one. Let me tantalize you. You are a top operative under deep cover on your most important mission yet. People are trying to kill you. You meet this beautiful, exotic woman and, well, no spoilers, but by the time the trip is over, you get the girl, kill the bad guys and save the entire planet. Now, you tell me. Isn't that worth a measly two hundred credits extra?”

Dean thinks about how bored and restless he’s been feeling lately and figures _what the hell_? Maybe he does need to spend some time away from _himself_. He signs on the dotted line and swipes his i-band over the payscan.

“Alrighty,” Armstrong rubs his hands together gleefully. “Let’s go and get you strapped in.”

The room where they do the procedures is reassuringly sterile and efficient looking and Dean may not like Armstrong much, but he feels confident that he won’t be lobotomized.

Armstrong has Dean lie down on something that looks like an operating table, and then puts a sort of helmet thing on his head. It has a bunch of wires coming out of it, which are attached to a computer that Armstrong is typing away at. Dean swallows and tries to figure out why the helmet makes him feel so uneasy.

“Just a few questions to fine-tune the program,” Armstrong says. “You answer honestly, and you’ll enjoy your trip a lot more. Firstly, what’s your sexual orientation?”

It’s on the tip of Dean’s tongue to answer ‘hetero’, but he’s been starting to think that’s not really true, and besides, what’s the point of taking an ego trip if he can’t be the person he actually _wants_ to be?

Armstrong clears his throat. “There’s no judgement here,” he says.

When Dean still doesn’t respond he adds, “Remember, Dean, you’ll enjoy yourself a lot more if you answer honestly. Besides, sexual orientation is hard-wired; if you try to force someone into a persona that goes against the core personality’s inherent orientation, it can cause the implanted memories to break down.”

Dean bites at his bottom lip. “I think I might be gay,” he says. “So yeah, I guess we’ll go with that.”

“And how do you like your men?” Armstrong asks.

Dean flushes at the question and can’t even begin to think how to answer it.

“Tall? Short? Muscular? Slender?” Armstrong prompts.

Dean closes his eyes. “Uh, tall. Definitely tall. And, um. Slender. But muscular.”

“Blond? Brunet? Redhead? Clean shaven? Bearded?”

“Brunet. Clean shaven.”

“And do you want your man to top or bottom?”

Dean feels his face redden even more. “I’m, uh, not sure. I think…maybe…bottom?”

“And do you want him to be a demure, submissive bottom or a pushy, aggressive bottom?”

Dean covers his face with his hands. “I really don’t know. A bit of both, maybe?”

Armstrong snickers slightly and then he removes Dean’s hands from his face and places them by his side. A flash of memory hits Dean like a tsunami; his arms are pinned to his side as he is strapped, struggling and shouting, to a gurney, and a helmet like the one he’s wearing now is attached roughly to his head. The memory flash is gone just as quickly as it arrived and before he can tell Armstrong that he’s changed his mind, that this is a bad idea, he feels a needle prick his arm.

[ ](http://s51.photobucket.com/user/zarazee71/media/BB%20art%20by%20Riverofwind/jen-gif-nog_zpsouufbah2.gif.html)

 

“Ready for Dreamland?” Armstrong’s voice is already becoming distant. “You’re gonna have a wild time, Dean. You’re not gonna want to come back.”  

\--

Dean wakes up slumped among the trash cans outside the fish market in Chinatown. It’s dark and he has no memory whatsoever of a trip to Mars. He frowns and staggers to his feet. What the hell? Twelve hundred credits for nothing? No way he’s letting that stand. He brushes himself off; notes the bruising on his arms with another frown and then sets off resolutely to the Déjà Vu offices.

Tiffany looks frightened when he walks through the front door.

“Look,” she says, hands held out placatingly. “We don’t want any trouble. I’ve already put through a full credit for the Mars trip to your bank account.”

Dean huffs and logs into his account via his i-band. Sure enough, the money has been refunded.

“What about my trip to Mars, though?” Because damn it, he’d been looking forward to it.

Dr Armstrong ventures out of his office and approaches Dean much like you’d approach a machete-wielding mutant. “I’m sorry,” he says, “But we couldn’t get the memory implant to take. At first we thought it was a schizoid embolism. But then we realized that we’d hit a memory cap.”

Armstrong rubs at his throat and Dean’s eyes widen when he sees the handprints around the man’s throat. “What happened?” he asks. “Did I do that?”

Armstrong’s eyes narrow. “You kind of went nuclear; total foaming at the mouth, balls out maniac, yelling about Mars and your cover being blown. You tried to _strangle_ me. It was a complete psychotic break. We had to sedate you.”

Mars? His _cover_? That was the goddamn ego trip he’d booked. Maybe Gordon was right about these guys after all; maybe he was lucky he hadn’t been lobotomized.

“Psychotic break, my ass,” he says. “Sounds like I started acting on the implanted memories before you’d fully finished implanting them.”

Armstrong glowers at him. “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he draws himself up and adopts a haughty tone.

“And why’s that?” Dean matches the doctor’s tone.

“Because,” Armstrong says smugly, “we didn’t get a chance to implant anything at all before you flipped out. Now, if you don’t mind?” and he gestures toward the door.

Dean stares at him for a moment and then figures he may as well take the money and run. He’s disappointed that he didn’t get his trip to Mars, but he got his money back, and he didn’t end up a drooling vegetable, so he’ll just chalk this one up to experience.

He’s barely out the building when Gordon appears from a side street.

“Dean!” he says.

“Hey, Gordon.”

Gordon slings an arm around Dean’s shoulders. “How was your trip to Mars?” he asks.

Dean frowns. He didn’t tell anyone that he was planning on taking one. Then again, he did just come out of the Déjà Vu building, so maybe Gordon just put two and two together. Doesn’t mean he’s going to admit to the man that he was right about the Déjà Vu people being incompetent butchers.

“Didn’t happen,” he says gruffly. “I was going to do it, but I kept remembering what you said about your buddy who got lobotomized, so I didn’t go through with it.”

Gordon nods and smiles tightly. “C’mon,” he says, trying to guide Dean down the side street he’d just appeared from. “Let me buy you a drink.”

Something about his demeanour seems off to Dean, so he shakes his head. “No thanks, man,” he says. “It’s getting late. I should probably get home to my wife.”

He tries to head toward the train station, but Gordon is insistently propelling him toward the alley. Dwayne and Brad step out of the shadows and Gordon pulls a gun, and suddenly Dean is bailed up against a wall in a dark, dirty alley, with a gun under his chin.

“What the hell, Gordon?” he says, voice shaky.

“You blabbed, Dean,” Gordon says. “You blabbed about Mars.”

“Are you insane?” Dean says, eyes widening. “I don’t know anything about Mars!”

But even as he says it, he knows it isn’t true.

Gordon doesn’t seem to believe him either, because he backhands Dean across the face. Hard. Dean spits out blood and runs his tongue across his bottom lip which he just bit through. “What the _fuck_?” he says.

“You shoulda listened to me, Dean. I was put here to keep you outta trouble.”

Dean frowns. “You were _put_ here? Gordon… we’ve been buddies since High School. Whoever you think I am, I’m not, man. I’m _me_.”

Gordon laughs and shakes his head. “No,” he says. “You’re really not.”

His trigger finger moves and Dean reacts without thinking: he knees Gordon in the groin and throws himself sideways in a complex move that he somehow _knows_ will get him clear of a bullet fired at close range. The gun discharges harmlessly into the sky and Dean sweeps Gordon’s legs out from under him and then smashes his booted heel into his best friend’s face before whirling to confront Dwayne and letting fly with a round house kick that knocks the man’s drawn gun from his hand. Dean takes advantage of Dwayne’s surprise to spin around and grab him from behind, using him as a shield when Brad shoots at him and then pushing his body into Brad hard enough to knock him down. He turns and runs then, zigging and zagging and listening for bullets or footsteps, but there’s only the sound of his own footfalls, his own ragged breathing and he doesn’t stop running until he’s on the train.

It’s not rush hour, so the commuters aren’t packed cheek to jowl, but it’s still crowded. Dean grips the overhead hand-strap with one white knuckled hand and bites at the thumbnail on his other hand.

What just… what just happened? He shifts his feet for better balance and notices that a woman in a blue coat is looking at him askance. He glances down at himself and sees the blood. He offers the woman a self-deprecating smile. “Construction,” he says. “Work accident.” She looks away.

When the train arrives at Sector 12, Dean exits in the center of a crowd, his eyes darting everywhere as he looks for unusual movement or unnatural stillness or the glint of metal that might mean someone has a gun on him. His brain is calculating angles and odds and muscle memory appears to have taken over his body, because he’s acting on instincts he wasn’t even aware that he had, using reflective surfaces to check for covert surveillance, while keeping his face angled away from the CCTV cameras.

A small part of Dean is wondering why he isn’t freaking out. His best friend since high school just tried to kill him and Dwayne is dead. Oh, and apparently he knows kung fu, which he can’t remember learning. Ever.

Carmen is playing tennis on the holo wii when Dean flings the front door open and then edges inside, sideways, his back to the wall and his steps cautious.

“Hi, Honey,” she calls out.

Dean doesn’t answer. He makes sure every room in the house is clear and then grabs a bag and starts throwing stuff inside it.

“What the hell, Dean?” Carmen’s leaning against the door frame with her arms folded.

“I’ve gotta get outta here,” he says. “Gordon’s gone nuts,” he frowns. “Maybe you should go and stay with your mom for a while, just in case he decides you’re in on this whole Mars conspiracy too.”

“What?’ Carmen’s face is a picture of horror. “Mars conspiracy? What are you talking about.”

Dean pauses in his packing and runs a hand across his jaw. “Okay, look. I went to Déjà Vu—”  

“You did _what_?” Carmen screeches.

Dean holds his hands up in submission. “I just wanted to take a trip to Mars, that’s all. Get it out of my system. But I didn’t go through with it. And then Gordon showed up, started yelling at me that I’d blabbed about Mars, and he was supposed to be keeping me out of trouble, and then him and Dwayne and Brad tried to _kill_ me! And Dwayne got killed in the crossfire and…Carmen… I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but Gordon told me that I’m not _me_!”

Carmen crosses the floor and grips Dean by his upper arms. “I can’t believe you went to Déjà Vu! Everybody knows they’re brain butchers! My poor baby,” she runs a hand down his face. “Can’t you see what’s happened? They’ve fucked your mind up!”

Dean shrugs her off. “Carmen, just listen. People. Are. Trying. To. Kill. Me.”

Carmen rolls her eyes. “Nobody’s trying to kill you, baby. You’re having a paranoid delusion.”

Dean grasps her hand and forces her to touch the blood on his shirt. “You feel that? That’s Dwayne’s blood. It’s still wet. Does that feel like a delusion to you?”

Carmen shrieks and pulls away, not stopping until her back hits the bedroom wall.

For a moment all she does is stare at him, and then she clears her throat and straightens up. “Are you physically hurt, Dean?”

He shakes his head.

“Okay,” she nods decisively. “You go and clean up. I’m gonna call the hospital, see if we can get you in to see one of the Psych residents on the down-low.”

“I’m not crazy!” he calls after her. “So you don’t need to call anyone.”

Cleaning up sounds like a good idea, though, so he picks himself out a clean black tee-shirt and a green and black plaid over-shirt and then heads into the bathroom. He strips off his blood-spattered clothes, washes his chest and stomach, towels himself dry and then puts on the clean clothes. Dean looks at himself in the mirror for a long moment and then twists the faucet again and splashes water on his face. He takes a deep breath, dries off, and steels himself to go out and face Carmen. He has his hand on the door knob when all the lights go out and when he opens the bathroom door, bullets rip into the dark bathroom, smashing the mirror, and embedding themselves in the walls.  Dean hunches low, then hurls himself toward the living room where he dives behind the sofa. The wedding photograph on the wall behind him explodes, showering him in glass.

“Run, Carmen! Get out of here!” he shouts.

Bullets thud into the front of the sofa. They whiz overhead and shatter the table lamp. Dean sticks his head around the bottom corner of the sofa and is able to pick out his assailant in the far corner of the living room. He picks up a glass drink coaster and hurls it toward the kitchen. Taking advantage of his assailant’s momentary distraction, he hurtles out from behind the sofa and tackles the attacker, knocking them to the ground, his hand gripping their gun hand and bashing it against the floor until their hold on the gun loosens and the gun scatters across the floor.

“Dean?” Carmen says from where she’s pinned beneath him.

“ _Carmen_?”

Dean sits back, his face twisted with disbelief and Carmen punches him in the balls. He groans and falls to the side, clutching at his groin. “Son of a bitch!”

Carmen scrambles for the gun and Dean pulls himself together and lunges for her legs, dragging her backwards. She rolls and kicks out, but he manages to trap her, sitting on her hips and pinning her hands beside her head.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks.

Carmen licks her lips and then her legs are wrapping around his neck from behind.

It all becomes a little disjointed after that, he twists and rolls and then they’re trading wickedly fast blows, chopping at vulnerable points, and Dean doesn’t dare think about what he’s doing because he’s scared that if he does he’ll forget how to do it. Carmen manages to break away and she runs for the kitchen; for the knife block. He dodges two thrown knives and deflects a third, then a forth, and the fifth one he manages to catch. She comes forward then, feinting left, then right, the knife she’s holding changing hands, trying to confuse him, and then she lunges and he’s able to grip her knife hand and _squeeze_ , hard enough that she drops the blade. He places his own knife against her throat and she tries to throw her head back and smash his face, but he’s ready for that and evades the manoeuvre, simultaneously increasing the pressure on her throat so that a few drops of blood bead against the blade. She stills.

“Talk,” he says.

Carmen swallows. “I’m not really your wife.”

Dean isn’t sure what he was expecting her to say, but that wasn’t even in the top ten.

“I got a lotta memories that say otherwise,” he says.

Carmen nods. “Yeah. You do. All implanted by the Agency.”

“The Agency?”

“The people I work for.”

“You know this sounds crazy, right?”

Carmen shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you, Dean. The Agency supressed your identity and implanted a new one.  I was written in as your wife so that I could watch you, make sure you didn’t start to get your real memory back.”

“Crazy,” Dean repeats.

Carmen shrugs one shoulder. “Your whole life, everything you think you know about yourself, it’s just a dream, baby. You and me, we only met six weeks ago.”

Dean stares at the messy dark brown hair in front of him and frowns. This is all completely insane. And yet… it kind of makes sense too. The sexual identity crisis he’s been having, that’s been happening for about the past six weeks; if Carmen is being truthful, it’s been happening ever since he was set up with his false life. And hadn’t Dr Armstrong down at Déjà Vu said something about how trying to force a false sexual orientation will cause an implant to break down? All those memory flashes; those things he knew but didn’t remember learning. Could they be his _real_ memories pushing through? How _did_ he know Kung Fu?

“Okay, then,” Dean says slowly. “If I’m not me, then who the hell am I?”

Carmen shrugs again. “Beats me, baby. I just work here.” She pushes her ass into his groin and grinds back against it. “You know, I was pretty excited when I got this assignment. It’s not often I get to monitor a hot, sexy guy like you. I couldn’t believe it when you weren’t interested. Of course, my asshole boss didn’t bother to mention that they’d implanted you against your orientation.”

“That was kind of stupid of them, wasn’t it?” he can’t help saying. Because it’s better to focus on the fact that they’d handed him a potential escape route than that they’d been cruel enough to try to make sure he was unhappy at the most fundamental of levels.

Whoever ‘they’ are.

“Yeah,” Carmen chuckles. “It really was. You’re a great guy, Dean. And if you’d been straight, you and me…we could’ve really had some fun together.”

Dean turns his head, feeling just a little self-conscious, and movement on the live feed security monitor catches his eye: half a dozen gun-toting, black-clad figures heading down the hallway toward their apartment.

He clutches Carmen even tighter, lets the knife bite in a little further. “Clever girl,” he says.

Carmen whimpers. “You’re not gonna hurt me are you?” she says, her voice breathless and high like a little girl. “Not after everything we’ve been through together the last few weeks.”

And the bitch of it is she’s right. Dean (he frowns...or whoever the hell he is) doesn’t have it in him to kill her. But—he slams the handle of the knife into her temple—he can see his way clear to knocking her out just fine.   

He picks up Carmen’s gun as he runs past it and then goes and shuts himself in the linen closet. He pries the cover off the return air duct for the heating system and then shimmies inside, spider crawling upwards until he’s in the ducts in the roof. He’s always (hah…always…) had a good sense of direction and Dean crawls slowly and carefully until he’s over Mrs McCallum’s apartment, before finding her return air duct and lowering himself into her linen cupboard.

“Evening, Mrs McCallum,” he calls out cheerfully when she gasps at his sudden appearance in her living room, her wrinkled hands trembling up to her face. “Just doing some maintenance work for the super,” he winks and waltzes out her front door.

And then he runs.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean decides to head back to Sector Nine, figuring that it’ll be easier to lose himself there than in a residential sector. And then… what? Head to the Lower District to hide out? Try to get to Mars to figure out what he supposedly blabbed about? Dean’s head is spinning and his hands have started to shake. The ear-drum-splitting klaxon that sounds as soon as he steps onto the platform doesn’t help with that at all; nor do the half a dozen transit officers who rush toward him with their guns drawn, yelling, “ _Disarm now, Citizen! Down on the ground!”_

Dean freezes. And then he remembers Carmen’s gun, shoved into the back waistband of his jeans in a way that feels comfortable and reassuring. He looks up at the security scanner and sees the gun’s outline, looming large on the big screen.  Dean panics, running into the crowd of people on the platform, just as the train arrives. He jumps the tracks, narrowly avoiding getting mowed down, and then ducks underneath the train and clings horizontally to its underside. He thinks he may have done this before, because he seems to intuitively find a section of the carriage that is a little higher off the ground and comes with convenient hand holds.  The train is late leaving the station, while the transit officers search to make sure he isn’t aboard. Eventually, though, they let it leave, the general consensus seeming to be that he ran off.

It’s scary as fuck clinging to the underside of a fast moving train. His knuckles are white, his eyes and nose are streaming, and he can feel his skin pulled taut.

When the train comes to a stop, Dean pries his fingers loose, drops and rolls. He abandons the gun on the tracks and sneaks his way up onto the platform and then swipes out of the station without any drama. He loses himself in Chinatown and then sits down to think. So far, the people who are out to get him, the Agency, if Carmen is to be believed, don’t seem to be working with the local authorities, but Dean can’t be certain how long that will continue. He can’t be certain of anything really, up to and including, who he actually is.  Dean puts his head in his hands and is startled when his i-band alerts him to an incoming call. Dean looks at the caller ID and frowns. He has no idea who Dr Badass is, but his gut is telling him to answer the call, so he does.

“Dean Winchester?” says the voice on the other end.

“Why you gotta start with the hard questions?” Dean gripes.

Dr Badass’s laugh surprises him. “Fair enough. Okay, look, we gotta be quick here. You already seem to have figured out that you’re not you. That’s a good start. Now, I need you to trust me. I need you to go to the corner of Montrose Street and Bourke Road.  There’s a street vendor there who sells nuts—”

“How very appropriate,” Dean mutters.

“He’s gonna give you a briefcase and a new i-band. Put the new i-band on immediately and smash your old one. It can be used to track you. The new i-band will have an address in it. You need to get to that address pronto. You with me?”

“Yeah,” Dean says and before he can say anything else, the line goes dead.

Dean brings up the location of the nut vendor on his i-band’s GPS and then goes there quickly.  An Asian man wearing Chef’s pants, a white shirt and a white hairnet hands him a small silver briefcase and a new i-band. He takes his old one off immediately and grinds it under his heel before posting it down a storm water drain. He puts the new one around his wrist and the new message tone sounds immediately, giving him an address which he looks up straight away. The place is an abandoned cement factory and Dean jogs there.

He puts the briefcase down on a work bench and looks around. “Now what?”

Almost on cue, his i-band makes the incoming call tone and Dean answers promptly.

“Yeah?”

“Open the briefcase. The combination is,” Dr Badass rattles off a series of numbers and Dean spins the dial until the lock clicks open. “Inside you’ll find a device, looks a little like a socket wrench.”

Dean picks it up. “Got it. What now?”

“I need you to shove it up your nose.”

Dean blinks. “I beg your pardon,” he says, rather politely he thinks, under the circumstances.

“You’re bugged,” Dr Badass says. “Partly so they can track you physically, but mostly so that they can keep an eye on the memory implant. So hurry up and do what I say, they could be tracking you here, right now.”

Dean swallows and then gingerly places the socket wrench thing in his nose.

“Shove it in hard,” Dr Badass says.

“You don’t want me to buy you dinner first?” Dean quips, because he’s pretty much on his last nerve right now, but he does what he’s told.

“Press the button on the handle,” Dr Badass says.

As soon as he does, Dean feels something shoot upwards and blinding pain nearly cleaves his head in two.   

“Jesus _fuck_!” he cries out.

“Pull it out,” Dr Badass says calmly.

When he gets it out, Dean finds that the socket wrench is clamped tightly onto something that looks a little like a silverfish made of fine wire, only with a fuckton more waving antennae things. He doesn’t actually throw up, but it’s a close thing.

“And that, my friend,” says Dr Badass, “is a Lepisma tracker. Smash it now.”

“No problem,” Dean says, placing the little horror on the floor and then smashing it with the heel of his boot.

“Excellent,” Dr Badass says. “You’ve gone off their grid.”

“You sure?”

“Oh yes,” Badass replies. “I’m hacked into their system and your light just went out. So to speak.”

“Who are they?” Dean asks. “Why did they put that thing in my head?”

“I’ll answer those questions for you,” Badass says, “but first we need to get you to a safehouse. They’ve been tracking you and I don’t know how close they got before we knocked you off the grid.”

As if on cue, Dean hears the thud of boots on concrete and sees the silhouettes of people with guns running past the opaque factory window.

“They’re here,” he says, voice low.

Dr Badass lets out a long breath. “Okay,” he says. “Not good, but not unexpected. Leave the briefcase. Head to the back of the building and go right. There’s a room at the end with a large drain. Pull the cover up and go down into it.”

Dean’s moving before Dr Badass finishes speaking in his ear. He jogs in the direction he was told to go, stopping to flatten himself against a wall on several occasions when he hears footfalls coming close.  He edges toward the final corridor and peeks around the corner. There’s an armed man at the end, right in front of the room he needs. “Dude!” he whispers into his i-band, “they’re everywhere! It’s no go, man.”

“Give me a minute,” Badass says.

Dean hears an abrupt cry of excitement, followed by gunfire and then he has to hide inside a storage cupboard because the armed man who was blocking his way is suddenly running to join in the fun.

Dr Badass is snickering. “Okay,” he says. “The way is clear.”

Dean is just exiting the cupboard when there’s a massive explosion. He stumbles and swears, but keeps running. “What the hell did you do?” he says.

“Triggered the briefcase’s holo projector to show an image of an armed man firing a laser gun, then, when the agents were all gathered around, I activated the self-destruct on the briefcase. The bottom of it’s packed with Semtex. Kaboom!”

Dean has to admit, that is pretty badass.

He finds the drain cover and pulls it up. It’s a bitch of a thing to move, but he gets the job done.

“Awesome,” he groans as he lowers himself into the cavernous tunnel below. “This is a sewer isn’t it? As if there hasn’t been enough shit in my life lately.”

Dr Badass guides him through the sewer, until finally he says, “Okay, stop for a minute. To your right, there’s a hollow in the wall. Can you see it?”

It’s pretty dim in the sewer, but Dean can just make out what he’s talking about. “Yeah,” he says, “there’s a locked box sitting in, like a hollowed out hole.”

Dr Badass gives him the combination and Dean opens the box. “There are six envelopes in there,” Badass says. “Choose one and follow the instructions inside it. We’re going to radio silence for a while now.”

Before Dean can give his agreement, the line goes dead again. He picks out an envelope and opens it, activating the torch app on his i-band so that he can read what it says.

He follows the directions it gives and fifteen minutes later, he’s climbing out of the sewer tunnel and emerging into… a slum. Several dive bars compete for trade from the pimps, peddlers and gang bangers who stalk the dirty streets, and there’s a hooker or three on every corner and drunks sleeping in doorways.

Fuck. He’s in the Lower District. Dean consults his piece of paper and reads his next instruction: _Go to The Titz Brothel and tell them you’ve just finished back-to-back tours on Mars and you’re looking for a three-titted girl to help you spend your severance pay._

Dean blinks. “That is so cheesy,” he mutters.

Still, he either does it—and maybe gets some answers—or he cuts his losses and runs. Dean looks around—he doesn’t like his chances of not ending up peddling himself on a street corner if he has to make his own way from here on in. So. Titz it is.

The madam behind the desk at The Titz is a buxom blonde, dressed head to toe in black latex. Dean flashes her his most charming smile and tries not to be completely intimidated.

“Hi,” he says, and then delivers the cheesy line. The madam stares at him a moment and then calls out, “Danneel, special customer for you.”

Sure enough, Danneel has three breasts. She takes Dean by the hand and leads him into what appears to be a BDSM dungeon. Dean is honestly getting more freaked out by the second. When she turns to face him, it’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her that it’s all been a terrible mistake, but her expression forestalls him.

She points at what looks to be a faux dungeon door. “Panic room’s through there. If a red light starts flashing, you hit this button here, and you get inside. I’ll let HQ know that you’re here and your contact will be in touch shortly. We’ve got a decent scrambler, so there won’t be anyone listening in who shouldn’t be. Good luck.”

She leaves and Dean sits down cautiously on what he suspects is a spanking bench.

Ten tense minutes later, Dr Badass calls him.

“Excellent work, Compadre,” he says.   “So, what do you know about the Ghost Program?”

Dean frowns. “The Ghost Program…uh…nothing. Why?”

Dr Badass sighs. “Okay, Cliffnotes version: Prisons are expensive to run, the government decided that implanting new, law-abiding identities in the heads of criminals and sending them out to work in areas where there are skills shortages, was a win/win scenario.”

Dean’s stomach does a sort of sick flip flop. “So…I’m a criminal?”

“You? No. Not really. We don’t get involved in freeing common criminals. Your file was marked with a ‘P’, which means that you were a political prisoner.”

“Huh,” Dean says. “Do you think that’s why I had people keeping an eye on me? Because I’ve gotta say, that doesn’t sound real cheap.”

Badass clears his throat. “The tracker in your head was activated when you suffered some kind of memory-related episode. That’s what triggered the Agency to bring you in for adjustment and that’s what made you trigger my search program.”

Dean frowns. “No-one was trying to bring me in,” he says. “They were trying to kill me. And I was being watched the whole time.”

There’s a long silence and then Dr Badass says, “Is it possible you’re maybe being a bit paranoid?”

“No!” Dean says. “Both Carmen and Gordon told me they’d been tapped to keep an eye on me; right before they both tried to kill me.”

There’s another silence and then Dr Badass says, “Dean? Would you mind switching to visual? We don’t usually do that, the less we all know about each other the better, but, uh…it’s possible you may _be_ someone.”

Dean scoffs at that. Obviously he’s _someone_. But Dr Badass did save his life and get him clear of people who were trying to hurt him, so Dean doesn’t mind letting the guy see his face, even if Badass won’t return the favour.

He flicks the appropriate setting on the i-band and Dr Badass sucks in air harshly. “Holy shit!” he says. “Holy mother-fucking shit.”

“I know right?” Dean says, deadpan. “I’m adorable.”

“You’re...you’re alive. Holy shit. We thought you were dead. This is. Wow. This is big. I can’t believe I found you! Sit tight, buddy. I’m gonna have to consult with the Boss Man,” there’s a pause and then, before Dean can ask Dr Badass who he really is, the line goes dead again.

\--

Danneel comes back in. She brings him a very tiny cup of thick black coffee and Dean immediately recognizes the aromatic, almost cinnamon scent of it. He looks up at her sharply and she puts the cup on the table in front of him and inclines her head, “ _Barakah Bashad_ ,” she says.

“ _Shukriya_ ,” Dean replies automatically. And then he frowns. “I… don’t know what that means.”

Danneel smiles. “It means you’re familiar with the Martian Coffee Ceremony,” she gestures to the cup. “Enjoy.”

Dean picks up the cup and takes a sip and his head nearly splits in two with pain as memories rush him. _He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor of a cave. It’s warm and smells of coffee, cinnamon and spice.  There are hand-woven rugs in various shades of orange and red and brown on both the walls and the floor, and there’s a low stone table in front of him. Opposite, sits a man with a shock of dark hair and blue eyes. He’s wearing a tie- dyed kaftan.  There’s a brazier filled with hot coals off to one side and a stone mortar and pestle beside that. The man is pouring coffee from a long-necked_ jebena _into half a dozen_ finjal _.  An arm settles gently across Dean’s shoulders and he turns and looks and it’s Jay! Jay from his dreams._

_“Jensen, if we can get your dad on board,” Jay says, “it’ll change everything.”_

_He shakes his head. “That’s just a pipe dream. You don’t know my father. He’s a complete and total asshole. He wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire.”_

As the memory starts to fade, and blackness envelopes him, Dean almost laughs at the fact that they’d carried his daddy issues over to his new persona.

“Mister?”

There’s a vile smell under his nose and he jerks away, the heel of his palm smashing against his forehead when another blinding headache hits him.

“What the fuck?” he manages.

“Smelling salts,” Danneel says. “Here,” she thrusts a glass of water and a couple of tablets into his hand. “Painkillers.”

He downs them fast and then discovers that the leg of his jeans is wet.

Danneel sees him rubbing at it. “You spilled your coffee when you fainted.”

Dean scowls. “I didn’t _faint_.”

Danneel rolls her eyes. “Apologies to your male ego,” she says. “At least you didn’t pee yourself when you _passed out_.”

“Better,” Dean says. “Passed out is much more manly,” and then he frowns. “Smelling salts? Really?”

Danneel shrugs and then she sits down behind him and massages his shoulders. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Look, you seem like a nice girl, but I don’t bat for your team, so if you’re gonna offer me a happy ending, you’re wasting your time.”

Danneel slaps him across the back of the head. “I ain’t offering. Asshat,” she moves her hands to his head and begins to massage his temples. “You know these memory flashes can trigger an embolism in your brain, right?

“Sweeheart, I don’t even know who I am, so let’s just assume I don’t know anything about anything.”

Danneel hums thoughtfully. “Okay,” she says. “The only way to completely destroy a memory is to destroy the neuron that’s supporting the memory. When the Agency creates a new Ghost, they don’t wanna do that, because then they lose the structure that they need for the new memories. So they supress the subject’s existing memories with drugs, basically giving them retrograde amnesia, and then they superimpose new, false memories over the top. If the suppression starts to fail, it can cause the subject to have a stroke.”

“So I guess I should avoid things that might trigger old memories,” Dean frowns. “Which would be awesome, except I have no way of knowing what those things might be, because I can’t remember!”

Danneel nods. “The Martian coffee seems to have been a trigger. Which isn’t really surprising because scent and taste are huge memory triggers.”

Danneel stops massaging him and gets to her feet, offering him her hand and helping him to stand. He sits back down on the spanking bench and she folds her arms and tells him that his contact wants him to remain in the safe room for a little while longer and is he hungry? Is there anything she can get him?

Dean shakes his head. Truthfully, he is a little hungry, but he figures it wouldn’t be smart to access his bank account and he can’t ask Danneel to pay for his take out.

“We’ve got a pot of _tsebhi_ keeping warm on the brazier out in the kitchen,” Danneel tells him. “You’re welcome to a bowl of it.”

“ _Tsebhi_ ,” Dean echoes. “Sounds familiar. Is it Martian?”

Danneel confirms that it is. She’s one of three Martians on staff and they prefer to eat their own traditional dishes.

Dean nods. “Better not risk it,” he says. “Don’t want me passing out again.”

It’s quiet when she leaves and Dean paces the room, examining the play equipment with varying degrees of horror and amusement. The drawer full of animal-tail butt plugs, he could have happily gone his whole life without seeing and he finds it very hard to believe that some people enjoy being whipped, but, hey, whatever trips your trigger.

It’s maybe an hour later, getting on for 1.00am, when Dean’s i-band makes its incoming call tone.

“I’ve uploaded a new ID to your i-band,” Dr Badass says without preamble. “You’re now Eric Brady, a flight engineer assigned to the Mars Cargo Shuttle _Ares_. You need to get yourself to the Spaceport by 18.00 hours tomorrow. Docking Bay 44. You’ll go in through the employee entrance at Gate 18 and ask for Jo Harvelle.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean says. “Are you gonna tell me who I am now?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line and then Badass says, “No. It’s been decided that it’s safer for you if you don’t have those details just yet.”

Dean huffs irritably. “I’m pretty sure that I’m called Jensen,” he says.

“Who told you that?” Dr Badass asks.

“No-one. I’m just having memory flashes, is all. Who’s Jay?”

Badass’s tone softens. “You remember Jay?”

“Practically the first thing I remembered. He must be important to me, huh?”

Badass chuckles. “I’ll tell him you said that. He’ll like that. But listen, _Eric_. Try not to remember anything else, okay? Once we’ve got you safely back home, we’ve got some tricks we can try to restore your memory safely, but until then, the less you know about yourself, the better, okay?”

Dean agrees reluctantly.

“Good,” Badass says briskly. “Now repeat your instructions back to me.”

Dean rattles off the details. Apparently there’s nothing at all wrong with his short term memory.

Danneel comes back just as Dean’s dozing off on the spanking bench. She shakes him awake and takes him through to another room, this one with a pink, heart-shaped double bed in it. Dean’s so tired that he doesn’t even care. He shucks off his boots, takes off his jacket and gets into bed. He’s surprised when Danneel strips naked and climbs in beside him.

“I’m your cover story, sweetheart,” she says. “HQ tells me your ID’s in order now, so how about you give me your name?”

“Oh. Uh. It’s, um, Eric,” he says.

“Eric,” she leans over and kisses him on the forehead. “Sweet dreams, baby.”

\--

He spends the night running through a labyrinth. There’s a voice in there somewhere calling out his name. Not Dean, not Eric, but Jensen. Over and over again. He has the disconcerting feeling that he’s had this dream before, many times, and that he’s going to forget it when he wakes up. The dream is frustrating. He’s searching for something, desperate to find it, but he keeps coming up against dead ends and cold stone walls and he just can’t find the source of the voice.

He’s tired when he wakes up and even though Danneel gives him regular coffee, it’s been brewed in the same kitchen as the Martian stuff and he can still smell the cinnamon and spices. It gives him a headache.

Danneel has an STS _Ares_ maintenance uniform for him, a duffel bag with spare clothes and toiletries in it, and a tool box.

The tools don’t look as strange as they should and he hopes to God Jensen knows his way around the mechanics of a space shuttle and that he’ll pass that knowledge on if Dean… Eric… needs it.  With a bit of luck, this Joe guy will be covering his ass, but if there’s an all-hands-on-deck emergency, he’d hate for the ship to go down, because he was taking up a spot on the maintenance crew and couldn’t pull his weight.

“HQ says they’ve sent a dossier to your i-band,” Danneel says. “The cover story for Eric Brady. Learn it.”

Danneel lets him spend the day in the staff’s private lounge. He alternates between watching cable and trying to memorize his cover story. Apparently Eric is from the Middle District, single, never married, toyed with the idea of joining the priesthood for a long time, before finally going to college to study flight engineering. His hobbies include photography and karate and he has a twin sister, Samantha, along with a whole bunch of half-siblings. It’s all a little crazy, to be honest, and reminds him more of one of the soap operas that Carmen likes to watch than a genuine cover story.

The girls relax when they learn that Dean… Eric… is neither a john, nor remotely interested in them and before too long they’re adjusting their crotchless panties in front of him and putting their feet up on his thighs to paint their toenails. It’s all a little bizarre, how comfortable he feels in the environment.

He leaves at three in the afternoon, because it’s going to take a good two plus hours to get to the Spaceport from the Lower District and he doesn’t want to call attention to himself by being late. He’s nervous about his new i-band, but he passes through the train station’s security without any drama and is able to swipe onto the train, no problem.

He arrives at the Spaceport at a quarter to six and he’s activating his holo ID for the security guard at Gate 18 ten minutes later. “I’ve been told to report to Joe Harvelle,” he says.

Not five minutes later a small blonde woman wearing the same uniform as him opens the staff door. He thinks he sees a flash of curiosity in her eyes, but it’s gone before he can be sure.

“Eric,” she says, reaching forward and shaking his hand in a strong, firm handshake. “Come on through.”

“Where’s Joe?” he asks as he follows her down a pristine white corridor. “I thought I was supposed to report to Joe Harvelle?”

“I’m Jo,” she says. “Chief Engineer on the STS _Ares_ ,” she grins at him. “And you, Eric, are my new Grease Monkey. I sure hope you don’t have any qualms about working under a woman.”

He ignores the obvious double-entendre, because he’s not stupid. “No Ma’am,” he says.

Her smile dials up a notch. “Brains and beauty. Just the way I like ‘em.”

He licks his lips. “I like ‘em tall, broad and masculine myself,” he says.

She turns to look at him, expression thoughtful and then she nods. “Good to know.”

Jo walks him through Security and onto the ship. They go to her office first. She sits him down at her desk and activates a small scrambler before perching on the edge of the desk and staring down at him with a furrowed brow and narrowed eyes.

“So,” she says, “how much of a dead weight are you gonna be? How much am I going to have to carry you?”

He meets her eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know. My… uh, Ghost personality knows how to repair and maintain a classic car, if that’s any use. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for any inconvenience.”

Jo sighs. “What about your core personality? HQ told me that he has some engineering skills and might be useful to us. What are your thoughts?”

Dean shrugs. “I have no clue what my, uh, _core personality_ knows until I need it. I didn’t know I knew kung fu until someone tried to kill me, and then all these moves just…happened.”

Jo folds her arms and her eyes narrow even further. “Huh,” she says. And then she snaps her fingers. “Remedial Maintenance Simulator Program, On.”  The program’s logo appears in the air before her. “Show Available files.” The logo becomes a list of file names. Jo scrolls through them. “Commence Test Scenario 27B,” she says, and the room is filled with an almost to scale holograph of the shuttle’s engine room.  

Suddenly a red light starts flashing and a siren sounds.

“Omigod!” Jo’s eyes widen and her mouth falls open in horror. “What do we do?” her tone is high pitched and panicky. “What’s wrong? How do we fix it?”

Dean looks at the light flashing on the control panel. “Okay,” he says. “There’s a problem in the number five engine. We, uh,” he scans the dials and gauges that relate to engine number five and is quick to spot that the engine temperature is in the red zone.  “Let’s get this cover off,” he says. Jo snaps her fingers and runs a hand across the holo image of the cover.  It vanishes, allowing Dean to see the inner workings of the engine. “It could be a problem with one of the turbo-pumps,” he says, powering the engine down, “or with the main fuel valve. Or the hot gas manifold,” he’s inspecting the various systems as he speaks. “But no… we’ve got a coolant valve issue. This one’s only open about,” he inclines his head and considers, “about twenty percent. In flight, it should be sixty percent open.” Dean lowers his head and examines the valve carefully. “No sign of any physical obstruction. So it’s probably an automation issue; software rather than hardware.”

“Very good,” says Jo, closing down the hologram. “Your core personality knows his stuff.”

Dean smiles faintly and says a silent thank you to Jensen.

It’s kind of odd, the way he’s starting to think of Jensen as a friend; some kind of ghost sharing skull space with him. Of course, in reality _he’s_ the Ghost; nothing but a collection of fake memory implants. He wonders how similar he is to Jensen. What will happen to _him_ if Jensen gets his memories back? If the implanted memories are wiped clean, will _he_ cease to exist? Is that the same as dying?

Dean shakes his head and decides he has too much on his plate to get existential right now. 

Now that she knows that he’s not going to be dead weight, Jo puts Dean on the duty roster. She goes over his duties with him and then assigns him quarters.

“I’ll take you over to meet your bunk mate now,” she says. “And Eric? What you told me earlier? About preferring guys? I’d keep that quiet if I were you. The crew here aren’t the most enlightened bunch and I’m sure you’d prefer the next ten days to go as smoothly as possible.”

Truthfully, Dean isn’t worried. He’s not here to make friends and he’s pretty sure he can take any of the guys down if he has to.

But Jo has a point, and she doesn’t deserve to have disharmony in her crew. It’ll be a lot easier on all of them if the ten day trip to Mars is incident free. He goes with Jo to meet his bunk mate, a weedy little guy called DJ, who disconcerts him completely by bypassing Dean’s offered hand and going straight for a hug.

Dean will play his part. He’ll do his job, he’ll keep a low profile and he’ll count down the days until he finally sets foot on Mars and comes face to face with his past.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean is sitting at a plastic table in the mess hall with a pile of Martian credit chips beside him.  

“Call,” he says.

Lucas allows the light of triumph to shine in his eyes. “Three aces,” he crows.

Dean winces. “That's a bad beat. That is a bad beat...”

Lucas grins and begins to gather up the credit chips that are on the table in between him and Dean.

“But, see,” Dean grins brightly, “I'm full... threes over aces.”

“What?” Lucas drops the chips back on the table and stands up, glaring down at Dean.

Dean laughs and spreads his hands. “Sorry. Hey, it's a cruel game, my friend.

Lucas flings his cards down on the table. “You’re a fucker, Eric,” he says. “A Goddamn hustling fucker.”

“And you all know it,” Jo says, coming across to glower at Lucas from where she’s brewing a pot of coffee. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the mess hall,” she says, and Lucas glares at Dean again and then storms out.

Dean laughs again. “Oh man,” he says, “it’s like picking low hanging fruit.”

Jo sighs. “Remember your first week on board? When you were going to keep a low profile?”

Dean tips all of the credits he’s won into a plastic bag and begins to pack away the cards. “Yeah,” he says. “Well I decided that being the quiet dude who kept to himself would make me stand out even more. And not only that, I wouldn’t have any buddies willing to vouch for what a stand-up guy I am, if anyone came and asked.”

Jo goes back to making herself a cup of coffee and grumbles that Lucas absolutely doesn’t think that Dean is a stand-up guy.

Dean gravitates to her side and stands with his back against the galley bench and his arms folded. “It’d be suspicious if everybody liked me,” he says. “Besides, Osric and Adam and DJ all like me just fine.”

Jo rolls her eyes and Dean smiles down at her fondly. The last nine days have been the best he’s ever had. Granted, his non-implanted current memories only go back eight weeks, so maybe that’s not saying much, but Dean thinks he kind of loves space travel and repairing and maintaining a spaceship. Away from Carmen, the pressure is off to be someone he’s really not and Dean’s feeling a lot more comfortable in his skin.

Or Jensen’s skin.

“You ready for landing?” Jo asks.

Dean nods. “All packed up and ready to go,” he chews at his bottom lip and rubs at the back of his neck until Jo rolls her eyes and asks him what’s wrong.  

“Just… how sure are we about the psychic?”

As a vouched-for crew member, Dean hadn’t been subjected to an outgoing psychic evaluation before he left Earth, but no-one enters Mars without a full psychic scan.   

Jo has explained previously that the arrival of their cargo shuttle has been timed to clash with the arrival of both a passenger shuttle and a Saturn cruiser. When things are busy, the spaceport usually hustles cargo crews through quickly, with just a fast scan done by one psychic who, Jo insists, will be Resistance friendly.

Jo grins at him. “Relax, Eric. Just think real hard about how you’re going to Venusville to get laid first thing, and you won’t get a deep probe,” she inclines her head and when she speaks again her tone is lightly teasing. “Although you’d probably like a deep probe, wouldn’t you?” She winks and then ducks out of the mess hall leaving Dean red-faced and spluttering.

\--

Dean’s i-passport scans without any drama; neither the holo photo nor the ID number raises any red flags. He lines up with Jo and DJ for the psychic scan and Jo relaxes beside him the very instant she sees the psychic.  Jo is immediately before Dean in the line and when it’s her turn to step up, she spreads her arms wide.

“Hey, hey, hey,” she says. “Long time, no see Traci,” Dean watches as the two women hug. They chat briefly and Traci performs a perfunctory mind scan before waving Jo through.

“C’mon through, Cutie,” Traci says, beckoning Dean forward.

Dean thinks about Jay’s ass and fantasizes about a few things he could possibly do with it as noisily as he can, and Traci laughs out loud. “So when Jo said you were her boy, she didn’t mean you two had a little somethin’ somethin’ goin’ on during the trip,” she sighs. “Why do the gorgeous ones always gotta be married or gay?” She waves him through with a lascivious wink and smacks his ass when he walks past, making him jump and swear under his breath.

Jo puts an arm around him when he comes through and hugs his waist. “You did good,” she whispers. “You should have a message from HQ on your i-band, telling you where to go next,” she pulls away and gives him a small salute. “Good luck, Eric. I hope you make it.”

Jo leaves him in the arrivals terminal and Dean buys himself a cup of Homeworld coffee at the spaceport Starbucks and then sits down and checks his i-band. There’s a message telling him to check into The Red Rocks Hotel, along with the hotel’s address, so Dean heads off, taking his coffee with him.  

According to the cover story, Eric Brady has been to Mars more than once so Dean tries really hard not to gawk like a first time tourist, but it’s hard not to be impressed. The Spaceport is at the very outer limit of the Upper Dome and with the exception of the very wealthy, most people never see any more of the Upper Dome than that. The fact that it’s at the outer limit, though, means that new arrivals to Mars are treated to a pretty spectacular view; sweeping sands that crest here and there like waves on a red sea and rocky outcrops that rise into the sky like islands. Everything is a dusty, diffused red and Dean can’t help the way his breath catches in his throat at the planet’s ethereal, alien beauty.  

Like 95% of the people exiting the spaceport, Dean heads for the bank of elevators and gets in line. He goes all the way down to the Lower Dome and steps out into a hot, humid environment that leaves him gasping.

“Welcome to the _real_ Mars,” says the man beside him with undisguised contempt. “The venting system is _still_ shit and Governor Morgan just put the price of air up _again_.”

“You’re kidding,” Dean says as the two of them step out onto a crowded sidewalk that’s teeming with people who are obviously struggling to make ends meet.

“Nope,” the man says. “Morgan’s been promising to put a better venting system in down here the whole fifteen years he’s been Governor, but the Lower Domes’ve still got the same damn obsolete tech as when they first established the colony,” the man stops speaking abruptly and looks around uneasily. He looks at Dean carefully and then at the wall beside them, on which the letters MRA are scrawled in big black graffiti. “Not that I support the rebels or anything,” he says. “ It’s just that Morgan Corp makes record profits every year, and they still put the price of air up every Goddamn quarter and reckon they can’t afford new venting technology. Goddamn corporate assholes with their duty to make a profit for their shareholders.” His mouth twists. “What about their duty to us? I ain’t sayin’ the rebels are in the right, but us ordinary folk deserve a fair go.” He peels off and heads down a side street and Dean watches him go, thoughtfully. Things are obviously a lot worse on Mars than the media on Earth is reporting.

Dean shakes his head and checks his i-band again for directions to the hotel. He can’t help noticing that most of the people on the street have some type of mutation; a third eye, a disfigured face, hands like claws. It’s not as if he’s never seen a mutant before; Dean’s just not used to seeing them in such high concentrations.

Venusville is at the very far end of the Lower Dome. It’s dark and humid and steamy and built mostly from cheap metal that’s already starting to rust. There are brightly flashing neon signs in the windows of most buildings, advertising food and whores and cheap credit.

The Red Rocks Hotel is between a gambling house and a Yum Cha restaurant and by the time Dean gets there he’s worked up quite a sweat. The reception has rust-colored wall paint and decorative red boulders, and the reception desk looks like it was hacked out of the side of a red granite cliff.

The man behind the desk is dressed in a red safari suit and a red fez.

“Welcome to Red Rocks,” he says with a long-suffering smile. Dean can sympathize. The color-scheme is already giving him a headache, and that outfit? Ouch. “How can I help you, Sir?”

“I’ve got a booking in the name of Brady,” Dean says. “Eric Brady.”

The concierge brings up a holo screen. “Here we are,” he says. “Three nights, was it, Sir?”

Dean nods.

The concierge pushes a payscan across to him. “Just scan here,” he says.

Dean smiles and runs his i-band across the scanner. Once again his fake ID holds.

“According to our records you left something in one of our lock boxes last time you stayed with us,” the concierge says. “Would you like to retrieve that now?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Sure.”

The response earns him a raised eyebrow, but the man goes and fetches a large rectangular stainless steel box. It has a fingerprint lock and Dean freaks just a little, but he smiles again and presses his thumb against the thumb pad. The box opens.  The first thing he sees is a gun with an engraved slide and ivory grips. A .45 calibre ColtM1911A1 with a seven-round magazine, to be exact, his inner-Jensen helpfully supplies. Dean swallows and figures he’d better take the lock box up to his room with him. He shuts it and says thank you and the concierge smiles and hands him a swipe card, before giving him directions to his room

Dean nods and thanks the concierge. He hefts his duffle bag higher on his shoulder, tucks the lock box under his arm, picks up his tool bag and heads to his room. He dumps both his bags on the bag rack and then sits down on the bed and opens the lock box. He takes the gun out carefully and then notices that there’s a flyer sitting underneath it. Dean picks it up. The flyer is for a brothel called The Last Resort. He frowns. The gun makes sense. But a flyer for a brothel? Maybe it’s some sort of a clue. He turns it over. Written on the back, in scrawling print are the words ‘For a good time, call Jay.’

Dean frowns again and something unpleasant settles in his stomach. Jay’s a hooker? He’d thought…Dean rubs a hand across his lips and then shrugs. Jay’s important to Jensen, that much he’s certain about. 

Dean leaves the flyer on the bed, but puts the gun in the wall safe that’s inside the closet. He stretches, looks around the room one final time, and then heads to the bathroom.

After ten days of steam blasts, he’s really looking forward to a proper shower. He luxuriates under the hot water for several minutes and then squeezes some of the hotel’s shampoo out of the miniature bottle and onto his hand. He begins to rub it into his hair and the hot water and steam really bring out the shampoo’s distinctive sandalwood smell, which brings another headache slamming into his skull as his hands begin to soap the broad back of the man in front of him. The man who’s leaning against the wall of the shower, acres of smooth, tanned skin on display as he presents himself for Dean’s touch.

“C’mon, Jen,” the man says, “that’s not where I need your hands.”

Dean slides his hands lower and massages the man’s ass. The man looks over his shoulder at Dean and it’s Jay.

“C’mon,” Jay urges. “Don’t make me beg for it.”

“But baby,” Dean recognizes his own voice. “You beg so pretty.”

“Asshole,” Jay says fondly.

“I’ll give you asshole,” Dean’s voice says. He slides one finger deep inside Jay and wakes up on the floor of the shower with cold water raining down on him. The headache has receded to a dull, distant throb.

Dean rinses off and then wanders back into the bedroom, towelling himself dry as he goes. He picks up the flyer again and decides it can only have been left for one reason; to tell him to go and meet up with Jay. He dresses in one of the casual outfits that Danneel had packed for him; tight black jeans and an equally tight white tee-shirt. He takes time with his hair. He’s not quite sure why he’s going to so much effort to look good for a hooker, but Jay seems to have meant something to Jensen, despite his profession, and he thinks his alter ego might be disappointed in him if he’s anything short of respectful.

Jensen folds the flyer and puts it in his back pocket, and then pulls a handful of Martian credit chips out of the plastic bag containing his poker winnings and drops them in the front pocket of his jeans.

He nods to the concierge on his way past the reception desk and then steps outside into almost unbearable heat.  

Dean’s inner-Jensen instinctively knows that the climate conditions are courtesy of the greenhouses that grow the colony’s food crops, which are all located on this level. When the crops reach maturity, the greenhouses produce so much oxygen that they become a serious fire hazard. The solution is to vent the excess oxygen, but it’s tricky to do without also venting the nitrogen which is needed to maintain pressure in the habitat, especially with the ancient tech they’re still using. Climate comfort is sacrificed in favor of breathable air and, as a result, Venusville, which lies closest to the greenhouses, is ridiculously hot and humid.

The Red Rock Hotel has a decent climate control system, but the streets are unpleasantly hot and by the time Dean makes it to The Last Resort his tee-shirt is sticking to his back, there are beads of sweat running down his neck and his underarms are damp. 

At first glance, The Last Resort looks like a bar. It has a black and white linoleum floor, a lot of small round plastic tables and a long bar. But that’s only on the ground floor. A long metal staircase leads to an upper level, where Dean can see a whole lot of doors, and hookers in varying states of undress lean over the balustrades in front of their rooms, attempting to lure customers to come upstairs. Other hookers are weaving their way between the tables downstairs, trying to talk visitors into buying them a drink.

Dean makes his way to the bar. He buys a shot of whiskey for courage and then tells the barman that he wants to see Jay.

“Jay, huh?” says the barman, wiping at the bar and avoiding Dean’s eyes. “You might wanna see Jay, but I seriously doubt that Jay wants to see you. He’s fussy see? Sticks to his regulars.”

Dean pulls the flyer out of his back pocket and slaps it down on the bar. “He’ll wanna see me,” he says. “Left me a special invitation.”

The barman looks at the flyer and then takes a long, hard look at Dean. Dean smiles and the barman sighs and shakes his head before making a call on his i-band.

“Got a customer for you, Jay,” he says. “Brought in a flyer; asked for you personally.”

He ends his call and deliberately goes down to the other end of the bar, away from Dean.

Dean shrugs and turns around. He leans back against the bar and keeps an eye on the staircase, because if Jay’s a hooker and he’s not already in the bar, he’s going to come from up there. He’s beyond shocked when someone sidles up next to him and squeezes his ass.  

“Well, well, well,” a low voice says in his ear. “What do we have here?”

Dean turns and gazes up at the man he’s been dreaming about for weeks. He’s even taller in the flesh, and shirtless, which Dean really appreciates, because boy, is he built. His jeans are so tight Dean wonders if they’re actually spray-painted on, and he’s wearing a pair of cowboy boots and a cowboy hat.

“Well hello, cowboy,” Dean says.

Jay’s face twitches in amusement. He picks up the flyer and waves it at Dean. “I hear you’re lookin’ for a good time, Gorgeous,” he says.

“Hell, yeah,” says Dean.

Jay turns away and heads up the stairs and Dean follows him, which affords him a spectacular view of the man’s ass.

Jay leads them into a plain room, with a non-descript double bed, one bedside table and not much else. He turns to face Dean and appears to drink in his appearance, before meeting his eyes and holding them with an intensity that almost makes Dean blush.

“You got a name for me, Sugar?” Jay says.

“Oh I got several,” Dean says. “According to my i-band, my name’s Eric Brady. The name that my memories tell me belongs to me is Dean Winchester. But then I’ve got these other memories—deeper memories—that tell me it’s actually Jensen.”

Jay lowers his head and then turns away abruptly and walks toward the bed.

“What about you, Jay?” Dean asks. “Is that actually your real name?”

Jay turns back to face him, his expression pained. “You don’t remember me?”

Dean runs a hand over the back of his neck. “I remember you,” he says. “But only vaguely.”  

When Jay steps forward suddenly, Dean is so sure he’s going to kiss him, that the right hook catches him completely off guard.

“Ow,” he rubs at his jaw. “Sonofabitch! What was that for?”

Jay’s eyes are as narrow as a cat’s. “That’s for making me think you were dead! Asshole!”

“Yeah, well. I haven’t exactly been myself lately. Ghost program, remember? I did the best I could. And I’m here now, right?”

Jay reaches forward and fists his hands in Dean’s tee-shirt and then his lips crash into Dean’s, needy and desperate. Dean kisses him back and then reaches around and grabs a handful of ass, squeezing the cheeks before dragging Jay closer so that their groins rub together. For a brief moment, Jay melts against him and then his whole body stiffens and he shoves Dean away.

“Sorry,” he says, running a hand through his hair and then pacing away from Dean. “I… sorry. We can’t,” he clears his throat.

Dean holds up his hands. “Hey, it’s okay, I get it. I’m not him. I’m not Jensen. He’s in here, but… we’re different.”

Jay smiles at him softly. “You are,” he cocks his head to one side. “And to be honest, I think I prefer you without the beard.”

Dean’s eyes widen. “I had a beard?”

“Oh yeah,” Jay grins. “And I gotta say, beard burn on the inner thighs? Really not fun.”

Dean blushes and Jay throws his head back and laughs. He sobers quickly though and fixes Dean with another intense stare.

“So,” he says. “How much do you remember about yourself? About Jensen, I mean.”

Dean crosses to the bed and sits down. “Not much,” he says. “I remember you. That we were…intimate,” he blushes again. Jay comes and sits down beside him and Dean notices the scar on his hand. He lifts his own scarred hand and holds it against Jay’s. “I remember this,” he says, his voice husky. “You were in the overhead duct. I was still on the ground. They shot through our joined hands.”

Jay nods, his eyes suspiciously shiny. “That’s when you were arrested,” he says. “I’m sorry, Jen, I wish I’d never left you.”

Dean puts a tentative hand on his shoulder. “I’m glad you did. Who knows where you’d be now… who knows _who_ you’d be, if you hadn’t. You did the right thing.”

Jay wipes at his face and Dean gives him a moment to pull himself together before he says, “Dr Badass wouldn’t tell me anything about who I am. Can you tell me, Jay? Are you allowed to?”

Jay nods. He stares down at the floor for a long moment and then straightens and turns to face Dean, meeting and holding his eyes.  “Your real name is Jensen Ackles. You were employed by Mars Intelligence and you were sent to infiltrate the Resistance by Governor Jeffrey Dean Morgan. It was a deep cover mission and you spent years working your way in, gaining our trust. Of course our psychics were onto you from the start, but we had decided to use you; to keep you well away from anything important and send Morgan bad information through you.”

Dean’s stomach drops as Jay talks. He’s a bad guy? He doesn’t want to be a bad guy. Every fiber of his being is telling him that Morgan and the powers-that-be on Mars are in the wrong and the idea that he could be working for them and trying to destroy the rebels is gutting. He swallows and looks at the floor and wonders how much trouble he’s in here.

“Only a funny thing happened,” Jay says, his eyes shining. “You only ever passed on things that really couldn’t be used to hurt us and then you came to me and told me that you were Mars Intelligence. You admitted what you’d been sent to do; and then you gave us everything you could on Morgan, Morgan Corp and the Agency. You bugged Morgan Corp and the Agency for us, and you helped us get access to their computer systems. You were our double agent. And then you were arrested,” tears well in Jay’s eyes again. “We were sure they’d executed you. We had a Goddamn _wake_ for you,” he stares at Dean and his expression hardens. “The fact that you’re still alive is suspicious.”

Dean meets his eyes. “You think they turned me? Turned me back? That I’m working for them again?”

Jay shrugs. “We’re worried that they may have turned you into some kind of ticking time bomb; something that won’t go off until it gets triggered just right.”

“I went through Spaceport security,” Dean says. “I don’t have a bomb in me.”

Jay rolls his eyes. “I’m not talking about a _physical_ bomb, I’m talking about a psychological hijacking, where they use torture to program you to take someone out or destroy something.”

Dean is horrified. It’s absolutely possible. There is so much inside him that he doesn’t know about, like the way he just knew kung fu, but not until he needed it. And the way he knew his way around the engines of a space shuttle, but not until he had to. Who knows what else is buried deep inside his melon?

“I’m not sensing anything like that,” Jay says, “but that could just be because I’m not sensitive enough.”

Dean isn’t reassured. In fact he’s completely freaked out. Not least by the suggestion that Jay might be some kind of mutant. He…Dean…Jensen…whoever…could be a danger to the Resistance. He could be a danger to Jay. He gets to his feet.

“I’m gonna go,” he says. “If I could be triggered into hurting you guys, then I should just stay away.”

Jay moves to grab hold of him, but Dean avoids him and hurries out of the room and down the stairs. He bursts out onto the street and doesn’t stop running until he’s back at his hotel. He makes his way up to his room and then collapses on the bed, breathing hard.

He’d been counting on Jay and Dr Badass to help him remember who he is and to restore him to a meaningful life. But if he’s a danger to them all, if his brain has been programmed to destroy them, then he has to stay away.

Which means he’s a little fucked right now. Dean has no idea how he’s supposed to survive as Eric Brady.

He paces over to the wall safe and gets the gun out. He checks the magazine and finds that it’s fully loaded. It feels comfortable in his hand and Dean can feel himself calming down. He’s not quite sure what that says about him, but he figures the fact that he finds the weight of a gun in his hand reassuring can’t mean anything good. He sighs and sits down on the edge of the bed. Whatever he used to do in the past, maybe it’s time for a fresh start. One of his choosing. Maybe he could try to find Jo and sign on with another cargo ship. His breathing starts to even out, as he starts to make plans.

There’s a knock on the door to his room and Dean eyes the door suspiciously. The knock sounds again and Dean runs a hand across his lips and then stands up. He makes his way to the door, the gun still in his hand, and slips on the security chain before opening it. Outside there’s a grey haired man wearing a lab coat.

“Can I help you?” Dean says.

“Actually, Dean,” the man says. “It is I who can help you. Can I come in?”

Dean’s heart begins to beat double time, because _the man knows who he is_.

“Who are you?” Dean asks.

“I’m Dr Lehne, from Déjà Vu.”

Oh this can’t be good. Dean swallows. “How did you find me?”

“It's difficult to explain. Could you open the door, please?  I'm not armed.”

Dean considers the question. If he’s going to have to take Dr Lehne out, inside the room would be a more private place to do it.

“Sure,” he says, “Just a minute.” He closes the door and then undoes the chain and opens the door wide.

Dr Lehne comes inside and Dean aims his gun right at the man’s head. He slams the door behind him and gestures him further into the room with the gun. “What do you want?” he demands.

“I’m afraid this may be difficult for you to accept,” Lehne begins.

“Go on,” Dean says when Lehne falls silent.

“I’m afraid you’re not really standing here right now,” Lehne says. “And neither am I.”

Okay, that he _didn’t_ expect. Dean raises an eyebrow. “Uh huh,” he says, his tone deeply sarcastic. “Do tell, Doctor, where _are_ we standing?”

“ _You’re_ not standing anywhere,” Lehne says. “You’re still strapped to a gurney at a Déjà Vu memory implant station. I’m monitoring you via a psycho probe console.”

“Oh,” Dean says. “I see. So none of this is real?” He smiles, mouth twisting mockingly. “I’m just dreaming? This is actually the wonderful Mars holiday that you guys promised me?”

Lehne inclines his head. “Not exactly,” he moves a pace to the side, but aborts the movement when Dean straightens the gun. Lehne sighs. “It’s more of a free-form delusion, based on the memories we were able to implant, before, well,” Lehne smiles gently and it’s really quite creepy. “Before things went _wrong_. You’re sort of,” he waves an arm, “making it up as you go along.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “What went wrong?”

Lehne’s face becomes a mask of compassion. “I'm afraid you've suffered a schizoid embolism and we can't snap you out of your fantasy. I've been artificially implanted as an emergency measure to try to talk you down.”

Dean’s jaw drops. “What a load of crap,” he says.

Lehne sighs. “Think about it,” he said. “You ‘came to’ and the last thing you could remember was going under for a Déjà Vu procedure, right?”

Dean raises his eyebrows and indicates with the gun that Lehne should keep talking.

“Don’t you see?” Lehne says. “You didn’t really ‘come to’. You were still in the middle of the implant procedure! But you’d suffered a schizoid embolism and things had gone off track. Everything after that—being followed, people trying to kill you, all the cloak-and-dagger stuff, the trip to Mars—those are all elements of your Deja Vu Ego Trip. Mr Winchester…Dean…you _paid_ to be a secret agent.”

“Bullshit,” Dean says. “All that, it’s just a coincidence.”

“What about the guy? The one you just ‘met’? Tall. Slender but muscular. Clean shaven. Brunet. Demure and pushy. Just exactly the way you specified.”

“No,” Dean shakes his head. “He’s real. I dreamt about him quite a few times before I even set foot in Déjà Vu.” 

Lehne’s face takes on a tense, pinched look. “Really, Dean? Can you even hear yourself? He’s real because you dreamt him?”

“He’s real because I _remember_ him,” Dean says firmly.

Lehne sighs. “Maybe this will convince you. Would you mind opening the door, Dean?”

“You open it,” Dean says. He tracks Lehne with the gun as he moves slowly to the door and pulls it open. Carmen is standing outside, her face streaked with tears.

“Carmen?” he says, his face slackening with surprise.

“Come on in, Mrs Winchester,” Lehne says warmly.

Carmen steps into the room, her purse clutched nervously in front of her.

Dean switches his gun from Lehne to Carmen and her face falls.

“Sweetheart,” she says, and it sounds as if her heart is breaking.

“I suppose you’re not here either,” he says.

“I’m here,” she says, nodding. “At Déjà Vu. They called me when,” her eyes fill with tears again, “when everything went wrong.”

Dean laughs. “Oh that’s rich. So tell me then, _darling_. Why did you try to kill me?”

The tears welling in Carmen’s eyes begin to fall. “I didn’t,” she says. “I would never. I love you.”

Dean shakes his head. “This is bullshit,” he says. “You guys are just full of shit.”

Lehne scowls and points at him. “You’re really trying my patience, Dean,” he says, his tone scathing. “What’s bullshit? That you're having a paranoid episode triggered by acute neuro-chemical trauma. Or,” his voice becomes even more derisive, “that you're really an invincible secret agent from Mars who's the victim of an interplanetary conspiracy to make him think he's a lowly construction worker who didn’t even graduate high school? I mean, come on; even a lunk head like you ought to be able to figure this one out.”

Dean swallows and the gun in his hand wavers a little.

Lehne sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. “Look,” he says. “I know that you and Carmen have been having…intimacy issues; that you’ve been questioning your sexuality. But Dean, those problems are not unsurmountable. A good psychologist can help you work through it all. But first, you have to come back to reality.”

“Please, baby,” Carmen says. “Even if you don’t want me anymore, please let the doctor help you. Please come back to the real world and stop trying to live in this dream.”

Dean can feel his certainly faltering. Lehne has a point. It’s actually a lot easier to believe that he’s delusional than to believe that he might have done some important work for the good guys in the past. And Dean has no doubt that the rebels are the good guys.  He frowns. Unless of course they’re just a figment of his imagination.

“Dean, please,” Lehne says. “You’re a young man. You’ve got a wife who loves you. This doesn’t have to be the end. We can pull you out of this, but you’ve got to want it.”

Dean thinks about it. “Suppose I did want to get back to reality. How would I do it?”

Lehne reaches slowly and obviously into the pocket of his lab coat and pulls out a plastic snaplock bag. Inside it is one small white tablet.

“What’s that?” Dean asks.

“It’s a symbol,” Lehne tells him gravely, “of your desire to return to reality. You swallow it and you’ll fall asleep inside your delusion and wake up back in the real world.”

Dean licks at his lips and glances at Carmen who nods encouragingly.

Dean returns his gaze to Lehne. “So,” he says, “if what you’re telling me is true and all this,” he waves a hand around the room, “is just a delusion, then I could pull this trigger and put a bullet in your head and it wouldn’t make any difference.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference to me,” Lehne says, his mouth pursed with displeasure. “But it would make a lot of difference to you.  In your mind, I'd be dead.  And with no one to guide you out, you'd be stuck in permanent psychosis. You may well play out your long, complex spy delusion, but in the end, reality will come crashing down and by the time it does, you'll be nothing but a vegetable!”

“Please, baby,” Carmen says. “Let us help you.”

Dean rubs a hand across his lips and glances uncertainly at Dr Lehne.

“Here,” Lehne holds out the white pill. “Take it. Put the gun down and take it.”

Dean lowers the gun. He takes the pill and turns it over in his fingers before glancing back up at Lehne.

“Put it in your mouth,” Lehne says.

Dean puts the pill in his mouth.

“Good,” Lehne says. “Now swallow it.”

Dean looks at Carmen who nods encouragingly and then at Lehne whose expression is disconcertingly anticipative. A bead of sweat runs down Lehne’s temple and Dean frowns, because why would someone who wasn’t really here be sweating? He side-eyes Carmen and sees her making eye contact with Lehne and in that moment he is absolutely certain what he needs to do. He spits the pill out, swings the gun up and shoots Lehne right between the eyes.

“Goddamn it, Dean,” Carmen says, backing away from him. “Now you’ve done it!”

Before Dean can respond, the wall in between his room and the room next door explodes in a shower of plaster, and four…no, six…armed and masked intruders dressed from head-to-toe in black, come bursting through, shouting at him to put down the gun and get on the ground.

Dean does a quick calculation of the odds and his inner-Jensen informs him grimly that there’s no way he’s going to be able to take out six armed attackers. He lowers the gun, slowly and obviously and then sinks to his knees and puts his hands behind his head.

Two of the attackers approach him cautiously while the other four keep their guns trained on him. Dean’s hands are twisted roughly behind his back and he’s handcuffed, tightly and hauled to his feet.

Carmen comes and stands in front of him, her expression cold and haughty. She stares up at him and then draws back her fist and punches him in the face. Dean’s head snaps back and his eyes water; the woman sure has one hell of a punch.

“That’s for making me come to Mars,” she says. “I fucking _hate_ this planet!”

Dean manages a shit eating grin and Carmen turns away in disgust. She presses a button on her i-band and a moment later she says, “Governor Morgan, Sir? I’ve got him.”


	5. Chapter 5

Dean is dragged from his room by two of the black-clad intruders. Of the remaining four, two take point and two walk behind him with Carmen.

Dean is trembling and his stomach churns with fear as they head to the elevators. Carmen had told the guys with the guns that Dean was to be escorted straight to Governor Morgan and then she’d sneered at him and told him that he’d be going before a firing squad for sure; that not even his daddy could save him this time.

Dean isn’t exactly sure what she means by that. Not the firing squad bit; that he gets all too well, but the part about his daddy saving him. That didn’t gel with what he knew. He’d gathered, from the snippets of Jensen’s memories that he’s been able to recall, that Jensen and his father don’t get along. Why would he save him? Then again, he isn’t a father himself, but he supposes that not many parents would be cool with the idea of their kid being killed.

The guys dragging Dean come to a stop. One of the point guys presses the button to call the elevator and then they all stand patiently like a bunch of heavily armed office workers and wait for it to arrive. It’s a little surreal and Dean finds himself sniggering quietly, which earns him a smack in the ribs with the butt of an assault rifle.  The down arrow above the elevator flashes, the elevator pings and the doors slide open.

Three of Dean’s captors are dead and everyone else has dived for the ground, before Dean has even managed to process the fact that Jay is standing in the elevator, long jean-clad legs spread wide for balance, as he rapid fires a handheld Gatling gun.

[ ](http://s51.photobucket.com/user/zarazee71/media/BB%20art%20by%20Riverofwind/jaygun_zpsehvqxadi.jpg.html)

Dean wonders what it says about him that he’s incredibly turned on right now.

He shakes his head and refocuses on the situation at hand. Two more of his escort are lying unmoving on the ground and Dean’s inner-Jensen decides that he likes these odds. He steps quickly through his cuffs so that his hands are bound in front of him rather than behind, and then he liberates a Sig Sauer tactical pistol from the dead hands of one of his former captors. Before he can do anything useful with it, he has to throw himself out of range of the hand gun that Carmen is suddenly firing at him. She and the one remaining black-clad armed guy are taking cover on the far side of the bank of elevators and Dean returns fire from where he’s hiding behind a convenient pillar. Jay steps out of the elevator and fires and both Carmen and the black-clad guy retreat. Dean doesn’t blame them; the Gatling gun can fire 1000 rounds a minute and when someone as tall and built as Jay comes at you with one, it’s got to be a little scary.

Black clad dude goes down and Carmen puts her gun on the ground and surrenders.

“Honey,” she calls out to Dean. “You’re not gonna let him hurt me, are you? We’re married, remember?”

Jay produces an epic bitchface and turns to glare at Dean. “You got _married_ , Jensen?”

“No,” Dean hurries forward. “Of course I didn’t. The Agency just implanted memories of being married in my head, that’s all.”

Jay scowls. “You have memories of being married. To her.”

“Omigod!” Carmen says. “You’re Jensen Ackles! Holy shit. I knew you were some guy who Morgan had Ghosted rather than executed as a favor to his father, but I had no idea… Wow. All that time, I was shacked up with a celebrity,” she inclines her head and stares at him. “I didn’t recognize you without the beard and the aviator sunglasses and the usual cloud of smoke,” she shakes her head. “Jensen fucking Ackles. Well…fuck me gently with a chainsaw.”

Jay glares at her. “That could be arranged,” he says snippily.

Carmen’s eyes narrow. “You must be the Boy Toy,” she says. “So I guess you know all about that awesome thing he does with his tongue?” she giggles, high pitched and girly and Jay treats Dean to another epic bitchface.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Dean says. They really don’t have time for this. “I didn’t touch her, Jay, I swear. And we should probably leave, before Morgan sends in reinforcements.”

The words are barely out of his mouth and Carmen has pulled a knife and is holding it against Jay’s groin. “Yeah, I don’t think so,” she says. “You and lover boy aren’t going anywhere.”

Dean raises his gun and Carmen sneers at him. “Try it,” she says, “and I’ll cut off some parts that you’d probably like him to keep.”

“Jensen?” Jay says. “Your wife’s a bitch.”

“Maybe I should ask for a divorce?” Dean says and squeezes the trigger.

Carmen goes down and Dean is hit by a wave of shock and grief. His Dean-brain is telling him that he just murdered his wife and his inner-Jensen is telling him to get a grip and _move_ before reinforcements arrive. 

“C’mon,” Jay says. He abandons the Gatling gun and pulls a Taurus out of the back of his jeans. “We gotta get out of here.”

Jay pulls the keys to the handcuffs out of Carmen’s pocket and releases Dean, and then they go to the fire stairs and run down them, clearing each level as they go.

When they get to the ground floor, Dean peers through the glass panel in the door and sees a group of heavily armed people waiting for the elevator in the lobby.

He gives Jay all the details using military hand signals and then frowns. He really needs to stop being surprised by the things he suddenly finds that he knows.

Jay comes close up beside him. “That door’s alarmed,” he says.

Dean smirks. “It looks pretty calm to me.”

Jay rolls his eyes. “Yeah, cuz that joke never gets old. I’d almost be disappointed if you didn’t make it. _Almost_.”

Dean looks at him. “Puns are a Jensen thing, huh?”

Jay’s face falls and he looks away. “Yeah. Jen makes really bad puns when he’s stressed. And with what we do,” he pauses and bites at his lip, “well, things are stressful a lot.”

Dean nods. “Thanks for the rescue, by the way,” he says. “How did you know I was in trouble?”

“We’ve got eyes everywhere,” Jay says. “Besides, I was going to come and get you anyway. Misha says you need to see Loretta.”

Dean nods as if that makes sense. “You know,” he says to Jay, “you’re an amazing, badass fighter. For a hooker.”

Jay’s face twists incredulously and then he scowls. “Seriously? I’m not a hooker, you asshat. That’s just a cover.”

Dean can’t pretend that he doesn’t feel a rush of relief at the news. “Oh,” he says. “That’s good.” Jay continues to look epically pissed and Dean figures that he’s just doomed Jensen to a lengthy period of sleeping on the couch. “What about Danneel?” he suddenly wonders out loud. “Is ‘hooker’ just a cover story for her too?”

Jay shrugs. “She’s part of our courier network and she’s got a reputation for being tough and fierce. But I don’t really know her.” He peers out of the glass panel in the door. “They’re leaving,” he says.

They wait until all of the armed guys have gotten into the elevator and then they burst through the fire door and out into the hotel’s lobby.

Ignoring both the wailing alarm and the concierge’s shout, they run past the reception desk and out onto the street. Jay tells Dean to follow him, before heading into a grocery store a few doors down. They sprint in between shelves of canned produce and then push through a swinging double door into the storage room at the rear, before disappearing into the labyrinth of alleyways behind the shopping strip. It all feels very familiar to Dean, and he really hopes that nothing triggers one of those head crushing migraines that make him pass out. Jay leads them through a trapdoor, down into an underground passageway and the sense of déjà vu becomes so strong that Dean stumbles.

“You okay?” Jays says, reaching back to steady Dean with one strong arm.

Dean’s head is throbbing and he’s being assaulting by Jensen’s memories, but he refuses to pass out.  “This…right here…” he gasps, “it’s where I first kissed you. Where Jensen first kissed you. We’d just…wiped out the Tax Office’s computer network and you were so _high_ ; so happy and I just…Jensen just…couldn’t help himself.”

“Try not to remember,” Jay says, throwing both arms around Dean’s shoulders and hurrying him down the passageway. “Just try not to remember anything until Loretta has a chance to see what she can do. It could be dangerous.”

Dean huffs out a laugh. Or maybe it’s Jensen who laughs. It’s getting a little crowded inside his melon. “You’re kind of unforgettable, Jay,” he says. “The Agency tried to wipe my entire life from my mind, I forgot… everything. I forgot Mars, I forgot my job, I forgot _me_ ; but I never forgot _you_ , not even for a day.”

Jay has the goofiest smile on his face, but there’s a heat in his eyes that goes straight to Dean’s groin.

“When you’re back to yourself,” Jay says. “You are _so_ getting laid.”

The passageway comes to a rocky dead end and Jay moves a small stone to one side and presses a red button that’s hidden in an alcove behind it. A section of rock slides away to reveal a large cavernous room, filled with storage shelves, and a dozen armed people with weapons levelled at Dean and Jay.

The door behind them slides closed and the woman nearest to them, a middle-aged blonde woman, lowers her gun.

“Jensen?” she says. “Misha said… but you know what he’s like… I didn’t…You’re alive!”

She comes forward and wraps him in her arms and Dean hugs her back and looks helplessly at Jay.

“Sam Ferris,” Jay says quietly.

She pulls back a little when Jay says her name and Jay reminds her that Jensen isn’t exactly himself right now, that his memories tell him that he’s Dean Winchester.  

“Is it safe to bring him here?” a male voice asks.

Jay shrugs. “Misha thinks so. He wants him to see Loretta. She thinks she can reverse the Ghost program, or at least make it recede.”

The man nods. He’s dark-skinned and bald, with a short beard and intense brown eyes.  

“I’m Charles,” he says, holding out his hand for Dean to shake. “I’m guessing you don’t remember any of us?”

Dean shakes his head. “I remember Jay,” he says. “I get flashes of other things,” he rubs a hand over his chin. “I remember a guy with really blue eyes and messy dark hair.”

“That’s Misha,” Jay says.

“Okay. Well I remember him a little, but I’m sorry,” he looks at Sam, “I don’t remember anyone else right now.”

“We need to move,” Jay says, apologetically.

He escorts Dean through another secret door, down another long rocky passageway, and then through another secret door, into yet another long rocky passageway.

Another door that looks like a section of rock slides open off to the side, and a man with short dark-blond hair and a woman with long red hair approach. Behind them, in the small room they’ve just exited, Dean can see an impressive array of computers and monitors.

“Dean?” the man says. “We talked on the phone,” he holds his hand out and Dean shakes it.

“Dr Badass?” Dean says, recognizing the voice.

The redhead sniggers and the man blushes a little. “That’s just my online handle. It’s Chad really.”

“And I’m Felicia,” the redhead says. “You…well, _Jensen_ , and me, we’re like this,” she crosses her index and middle fingers. “I’m the one who talked you through bugging the Agency’s computer systems for us.”

“Oh,” Dean says. “Okay.” He massages his temple as he feels his head starting to throb again.

“I need to get him to Loretta,” Jay says. Dean misses whatever response the computer nerds might’ve made, because his brain is being flooded with memories of walking through a wide glass sliding door, showing his pass and exchanging pleasantries with the guys on the security desk, and then taking a glass elevator up to Governor Morgan’s office, with Felicia’s voice in his earpiece singing _I’m walking on sunshine_ to distract him from how fucking nervous he is.

When he’s able to focus on his surroundings again, Jay is half carrying him through what appears to be a large cave, full of tents. It’s hotter in this area than the previous areas and it dawns on Dean that the temperature in these subterranean passageways is much cooler than in the main part of the dome.

The smell in this section is a little overwhelming, though; sweat and salt and spice and cinnamon and something he can’t quite put a finger on which is screaming _home_ in the far recesses of his brain.

There’s a one-armed woman hanging out washing and a small gathering of children are being given lessons in reading and writing by a gaunt-faced woman with grey hair.

“What the hell?” Dean says to Jay. “What is this place?”

Jay looks down at him, relieved. “You’re back with us, huh? You gotta stop remembering stuff, man.”

“I can’t help it,” Dean snaps. “What’s with the tents?”

“Oh,” Jay looks around. “Right. You wouldn’t… refugees. Governor Morgan decided that Morganville—the shanty town of people who got too badly injured in the mine collapse two years ago to keep working—anyway, he decided the area was a drain on the colony’s resources, so he shut off the air. We were able to break in and get…maybe two thirds of them out before they suffocated to death.”

“Fuck,” Dean says. “Fucking _prick_!”

They pass close by a tent with a campfire out the front. A man with one leg and one eye, half his face marred by ugly scar tissue, is stirring some kind of stew and the sweet, spicy scent of it triggers another barrage of memories, so painful and intense that Dean blacks out.

\--

When Dean comes to, he’s lying on a thick orange and green woven mat on the floor of a…room. A _yali_ , his inner-Jensen supplies.  Dean sits up and hands rush to help him. Not Jay’s hands. Dark hands; the hands of a woman. His head throbs with agony, the ceaseless scent of spice and cloves and cinnamon, triggering a near-constant barrage of micro-memories. 

_I’m dying_ , he thinks, and the woman takes his head in her hands.

“Not on my watch,” she says. She closes her eyes and begins to hum.

The pain in his head intensifies, but the woman—Loretta, his inner-Jensen supplies—is anchoring him and he can’t pass out, despite the fact that he really, really wants to.

“Easy now, Dean,” she says and he opens his eyes, even though he doesn’t remember closing them. He’s standing in a blank white room and Loretta is standing opposite him.

“Where are we?” he asks.

She smiles. “I don’t want to get jargon-y on you, sweetheart. Can you just accept that we’re going to find Jensen?”

Dean frowns. “I…yeah. I guess.”

“That’s wonderful.   She takes his hand. “Lead the way, then.”

Dean gapes at her. “I don’t know where Jensen is! Why the hell would I know where he is?”

Loretta sighs. “You’ve been searching for him in your dreams,” she says. “You’re getting better at it, closer. We’ll find him together. Okay, sugar?”

And it’s as if her words unlock some hitherto inaccessible part of his mind. Suddenly, Dean remembers nights spent wandering a stony labyrinth, trying to find whoever was calling his name. No, Dean frowns. Not his name. Jensen’s name. No… _he_ was Jensen. In the dream…he’s not Dean. He’s _Jensen_ and someone is calling for him. 

“ _I’m_ Jensen,” he tells Loretta. “And somebody’s looking for me.” He frowns again. “But…I’m Dean…”

“Don’t force it, sweetie,” Loretta says. “Just let it come.”

Dean closes his eyes and let’s himself relax and that’s when he hears it; “Jen-sen. Jen-sen,” called again and again. He opens his eyes and finds that the blank white room they’d been in has morphed into a dimly lit grey stone passageway.

He begins to walk and then grinds to a halt when he gets to a dead end.

“Why did you stop?” Loretta asks.

Dean gestures at the wall of solid stone in front of them. “Dead end,” he says.

Loretta peers at him and then out toward the solid wall in front of them. “Ah,” she says. “They’ve put blocks in. Clever.” She pats him on the hand. “You just focus on getting us where we need to go. I’ll take care of those blocks. Shut your eyes, honey, and just listen to the voice.”

He does as she says.

“That’s it, sugar,” she encourages, and Dean walks forward, toward the voice that’s calling out to Jensen. He knows he should walk slap bang into a stone wall, but somehow he doesn’t, so he stops worrying about potential obstructions and just focuses on getting to the voice.

“Took you long enough,” says the voice and Dean opens his eyes.

The man standing in front of him is him, but not him. He’s a little leaner than Dean, with a light beard, and carefully styled hair. He’s wearing a silver pin-striped suit with a silver shirt and an olive green tie, and Dean can’t see his eyes because he’s wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses. He flips a cigarette out of a packet and then lights it with a silver cigarette lighter. 

“Still,” the man—Jensen, Dean supposes—takes a drag on the cigarette. “I guess you did pretty good for a construction worker.”

Dean frowns and then he yanks off Jensen’s sunglasses. “Take those off, you douchebag,” he says.

Jensen’s (green) eyes widen. “You do realize you just insulted yourself, right?”

Dean shrugs. “We’re not the same person,” he says. “We might each be, uh, a fragment of, of, uh, a total, um, like, we’re different compartments of—”

“Oh God,” Jensen groans. “You’ve been talking to Misha, haven’t you? I swear if you tell me that we’re different parts of a dragonfly’s eye, I will punch you.”

Dean smirks. “You’d only be hurting yourself,” he says. “And no, I haven’t spoken to Misha. Loretta’s been trying to help me,” he frowns. “And speaking of, where is she?”

“Okay, this is good,” Jensen says. “Loretta knows what to do. In theory,” Jensen nods. “She’s gonna be able to dig me out of here.”

“Here being our brain?” Dean says.

Jensen frowns. “ _My_ brain. You’re just an artificial construct.”

Dean’s eyes narrow. “Wow. I can’t believe that I’m actually a great big bag of dicks. What a letdown.”

Jensen’s lips thin and then he mutters a grudging apology. “Could’ve put that better,” he admits. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “Actually,” he says, “our core personalities are the same. The Ghost program just changes a person’s memories.” Jensen looks Dean up and down, his eyes assessing and cataloguing. “You’re not going to cease to exist,” he says. “In case you were worried. Loretta is going to try to integrate us, but we’ll both still be in here,” he taps his head.

Dean nods. “So if we’re actually having this conversation inside your brain and I’m an artificial construct, then what are you?”

Jensen screws up his nose. “A residual self-image.”

“Huh,” Dean inclines his head. “Well, I don’t smoke and I’ve been driving the meatsuit for the past couple months, so maybe you could keep going with that?”

Jensen’s nose wrinkles. “Meatsuit? That’s grotesque.”

Dean grins. “But accurate. So. Any idea what happens next?” 

“Loretta should give us some sort of,” Jensen pauses and then he closes his eyes. He frowns and then rubs a hand across his chin. “I, uh. I think she wants us to hold hands.”

Dean grins wickedly. “Hey,” he says, “do you think if we had sex it would count as sex? Or would it just be advanced masturbation?”

Jensen stares at him.

“Sorry,” Dean says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I make bad jokes when I’m nervous.”

Jensen smiles, a sudden, wide, genuine smile that makes his eyes crinkle. “Me too,” he says.

“C’mon then,” Dean wipes his hands on the thighs of his jeans and then holds them out for Jensen to hold.

“Ah what the hell,” Jensen says. He bypasses Dean’s hands and hauls him in close, wrapping his arms around his neck and shoulders. “It’s not every day you get to give yourself a hug. My therapist would be so proud.”

“You have a _therapist_?”

“Not any more,” Jensen says. “Now I have a Rebel army. Much more therapeutic.”

And then Dean is in freefall, tumbling through long forgotten memories; he’s four and staring at the portrait of the beautiful lady that hangs in the foyer of his large, cold house; he’s seven and eating with the servants in the kitchen because his dad is away again on a business trip; he’s eleven and his father is shouting at him, telling him that a half-Martian mutant is not a suitable playmate for a boy from the Upper District; that the children of the Help, aren’t suitable playmates for an Ambassador’s son; he’s fourteen and being sent away to Boarding School on Earth, because his father caught him kissing another boy; on and on the memories tumble and he’s Jensen; he knows he’s Jensen; he feels like Jensen. He’s strapped down to a gurney, a helmet of electrodes fastened to his head and _you’re lucky_ , Governor Jeff Morgan says to him, _I’m giving you a second chance because your father begged me to. I’ll even do him a favor and give him the straight son he always wanted._ He remembers indescribable agony, he remembers losing himself, he remembers…

\--

He wakes slowly. He’s lying on something soft. He’s warm. He can smell _tsebhi_ cooking somewhere close by, extra spicy, just the way he likes it. He inhales deeply and detects the more subtle aroma of Martian coffee brewing. God, he’d kill for a cup. Jensen groans and sits up cautiously. His head feels…too big. He can feel memories sloshing around inside his skull and _they’re not all his_. He inclines his head to one side and then processes the fact that he’s sitting on Loretta’s sleeping mat, surrounded by sheer white dust nets and…fuck. Dean.

Jensen puts his head in his hands. That fucking bastard Morgan had stolen two months of his life; had tried to turn him into someone he wasn’t. Jensen stumbles to his feet and tries to fight his way out of the dust nets, before composing himself enough to gather them up and tie them back.

Oh God. They’d made him forget who he was. He’d been living on Earth. Jensen’s breath comes in fast shallow bursts. He’d…had a wife. Jensen feels sick. He’s going to be sick. He… needs to calm the fuck down. Funnily enough, the last thought is accompanied by an image of Dean with one eyebrow raised. Jensen takes a slow deep breath. He’s feeling pretty fucking violated right now, but when all’s said and done, Dean did good. Dean got him home. In fact, he’ll go so far as to admit, grudgingly, that Dean’s okay. For a guy who wears plaid. Jensen shudders.

The curtains between Loretta’s sleeping quarters and the living area of her _yali_ are pushed back and Jared is there, hovering uncertainly in the doorway like a yeti.

“Jared,” Jensen says and there’s an entire universe of meaning in that one word.

Jared’s eyes flutter closed and then they’re both moving forward and wrapping their arms around each other, holding each other close. Jensen’s eyes are screwed shut and his nose is buried in Jared’s neck. “Jared,” he says. “I missed you so fucking much!”

Jared’s laugh is a little shaky. “No you didn’t. You couldn’t remember me.”

Jensen drags Jared to sit on the sleeping mat, not losing body contact for a single second. “I remembered you,” he says. “Dean told you that.”

Jared’s eyes flicker uncertainly. “Is he still in there?”

Jensen isn’t quite sure how to answer that. “Dean isn’t really a different person,” he says. “He’s just me with different memories and experiences,” he shrugs. “I think he’s always gonna be a part of me. I think I’m always gonna have an ‘inner-Dean’,” Jensen angles himself so that he can look at Jared square on, but he doesn’t let go of his lover’s hands. “The Ghosting didn’t really take properly. I think, partly, I just didn’t believe in a life that didn’t have you in it.”

Jared’s eyes are large and warm and liquid. “I missed you so Goddamn much,” he whispers. “The only thing that stopped me from taking a topside walk without a suit was the fact that I wanted to make Morgan pay.”

“Jay, no,” Jensen pulls him close again.

They’re holding each other for comfort and reassurance, but it isn’t long before that changes and Jensen pulls back and looks searchingly into Jared’s eyes before slowly bringing his lips to the younger man’s. Jared surges forward, all passion and need, and Jensen responds in kind, plundering Jared’s mouth with his tongue, his hands tangling in Jared’s hair in an attempt to bring him closer, although how Jared could be closer without Jensen slipping inside his skin is a mystery.

A loud throat-clearing makes them break apart. “I will throw cold water on you if I have to,” Loretta says. “Don’t think that I won’t.”

Jared ducks his head.

“Sorry,” Jensen says. And then, because apparently he’s hugging everyone today, he stands up and pulls Loretta into an embrace. “Thank you,” he says.

Loretta tells him that’s he welcome and then invites both him and Jared to come and have a bowl of _tsebhi._

“God, yes,” Jensen says. “And I’d kill for a proper coffee, too.”

\--

Jensen sits cross-legged on the mat by Loretta’s hearth and mops up hot stew with Martian flatbread. The _tsebhi_ is awesome. It’s like an orgasm in his mouth. Jensen frowns. Actually, that’s not really true. Jared orgasms in his mouth on a fairly regular basis and the _tsebhi_ is nothing like that.

Loretta smacks the back of his head and glares and Jared is staring intently at his stew, pink-cheeked. And yeah, in some ways Jensen really hasn’t missed being around psychics all the time. Of course, the way Jared can read his mind to improve the sex between them is pretty awesome, and Loretta smacks the back of his head again.

“Sorry,” he gripes, “my ‘dealing with psychics’ skills are rusty!”

“So what was it like?” Jared says. “Being Dean?”

It’s a very obvious attempt to drag his brain away from sex, and Jensen goes with it.

“He liked to wear plaid,” he says with a pout. “And, oh God, he had to wear an orange safety vest and a hard hat. And he had to use a drill. Every day.”

“Very manly,” Jared says. He even manages to keep a straight face for a few seconds before he bursts out laughing.

Jensen exaggerates his pout, because he likes to watch Jared laugh.

“Actually,” he says, “I quite liked using the drill. There’s something very satisfying about building stuff.”

Jared licks his lips, his eyes wickedly wide. He darts a look at Loretta seconds before she smacks his upper arm.  “That’s it,” she says, “we need to finish up so that you two can get out of here before you set fire to my _yali_ with your lustful thoughts!”

Jensen doesn’t need to be told twice. He finishes mopping up the last of his stew with the flatbread and then drinks down the last of his coffee, before clearing away all of the plates to Loretta’s washing trough.

“Would you like us to stay and help you tidy up?” Jared asks Loretta.

She shakes her head and then turns to Jensen. “Sit back down and tell me how you’re doing, sweetie,” she says.

Dean goes and sits cross-legged in front of her. “I can feel Dean’s fake memories sliding around in here,” he taps his head, “but now that my genuine memories are back, they feel somehow… less real.”

She quizzes him for a while, asking him random questions that span his entire lifetime. There are gaps, here and there, memories that won’t come; questions that bring false Dean-memories sparking to life, but there’s no doubting that he’s Jensen again.

“I can even remember our holo activation code,” he tells Jared. “494. Even _Dean_ remembered it,” he chuckles. And then frowns. “No way. Sonofabitch,” he huffs. “Dean’s holo code was 147 which is radio code for ‘undercover officer’. Carmen’s idea of a joke, I guess.”

Jensen bites at his lip. He almost doesn’t like to ask, but he needs to know. “Jared was worried that Morgan might’ve set up some sort of psychic time bomb in my head; that I might’ve been programmed to do some sort of damage, given the right trigger. Did you find anything like that?”

“I did,” Loretta’s eyes flick to Jared’s. “But it’s been dealt with.”

“What was it?” Jensen says. “What was I programmed to do?”

There’s a long moment of silence and Jensen glares.

“I need to know,” he insists.

Loretta remains tight-lipped, so he turns to Jared. “I know she told you. C’mon, man. I need to know.”

Jared has a silent conversation with Loretta and then relents with a sigh. “You were programmed to kill any man you had sex with.”

Jensen blinks. “So, you, basically.”

Jared shrugs. “Your Ghost persona was programmed to be straight, but, uh…” Jared pauses, “I guess if you, um,”

“Slipped and fell on some guy’s dick?” Jensen says flatly.

“Right. If you did that, I guess they wanted that to make trouble for you.”

Suddenly Jensen really wants a cigarette. “Sounds like the sort of asshole thing my father would do,” he says.

Loretta reaches out and grips his hands. “Well I got rid of that trigger, so you don’t need to worry. You’re safe, Jensen.”

Jensen takes a deep breath and inhales the scent of cinnamon, cloves, curry spice and coffee that is so distinctly _Mars_ , so distinctly _home_. He looks across at Jared, who’s observing him cautiously. Jared looks tired and there’s turbulence behind his wide, watchful eyes.

“Jared?” he says, standing up and wrapping his hands around his partner’s hips. “Take me home?”

 --

Their _yali_ smells strongly of incense and dust and it feels unlived in.

“I got some food in,” Jared says, “and I changed the sheets on the bed and burned some desert sage to freshen the place up. But I’ve been staying with friends, the last couple of months. I couldn’t stand being here without you.”

He looks shamefaced and Jensen wraps him in another hug and says that he understands. He pulls back and takes Jared by the hand and leads him into the bedroom.

“I need you,” he says. “Need to touch you. Need you to touch me. Need to be inside you.”

“God, yes,” Jared breathes. He fists his hands in Jensen’s tee-shirt and falls back onto the bed, pulling Jensen down with him.

Jensen goes with it, falling in between Jared’s spread legs and grinding against him. He’s feeling a little bit like a caveman or a wolf right now, if truth be told; feeling a need to re-stake his claim on Jared, to mark his territory, to show the world that Jared is his and he is Jared’s and nothing can ever truly separate them.

“Yes,” Jared says, reaching up and pulling Jensen down to kiss him. “Yours,” he says, between brief, biting kisses. “All yours. Need this. Want to feel it. Want to feel it for _weeks_.”

Jensen slides his tongue in between Jared’s lips as soon as Jared stops speaking. He plunders his mouth thoroughly, licking his way inside, and thrusting deeply, while pressing his lips hard against Jared’s, nipping and sucking and biting. Jared’s hands come around and paw at his ass, grabbing and squeezing, and Jensen rocks harder against him, thrusting against the swollen outline of Jared’s cock until Jared moans and arches his back. That’s Jensen’s cue to pull away and start stripping. He rips off his tee-shirt and Jared sits up and sucks one of Jensen’s nipples into his mouth.

“Fuck,” Jensen swears. “Need you naked,” he pulls at the hem of Jared’s tee-shirt and Jared sits back and starts to take his clothes off. They get naked quickly and then Jared rolls over and pulls open their bedside drawer. He pulls out a pot of salve and a condom and turns back to face Jensen. He looks at him for a moment and Jensen is struck, as he is always struck, by the contrast between Jared’s powerful, muscled physique and the soft, warm innocence of his eyes. Jared smiles and lowers his eyes and Jensen knows that his partner is skimming his mind.

He holds his hand out for the pot of salve and Jared gives it to him, along with the condom, and then rolls onto his belly and spreads his legs wide.

Jensen takes a moment to just sit and look. He loves the man spread out before him so damn much and the fact that Morgan and his own fucked-up father tried to take the love of his life away from him makes him tremble with rage. It wasn’t so long ago that he was lying beside Carmen, trying to figure out why it all felt so wrong, feeling sick at the thought of touching her. It wasn’t so long ago that he was dreaming about the long legs that are in front of him right now and wondering why the mere thought of them turned him on so much more than the naked reality of his wife.

Jensen sees Jared’s shoulders tighten and knows he’s picking up on Jensen’s furious thoughts, so Jensen takes a deep calming breath. They tried to wipe Jared from his mind and they failed, and now that he’s back, he’s going to love Jared with every ounce of passion in his being. He unscrews the salve pot’s cap and dips two fingers into the jello-like ointment.

He strokes one slick finger against Jared’s puckered entrance and smiles when Jared sighs and relaxes beneath him. He pushes his finger inside, up to the first knuckle, and then begins to pump in and out. When he works his way in deep enough to find Jared’s p-spot, Jared moans and begins to thrust against the sheets. Jensen pulls out and adds more salve to his fingers before plunging back in with two. He lies down beside Jared and places open-mouthed kisses against his neck and shoulders while he opens him up, slowly and thoroughly. His own cock is lying flush against his stomach, red and swollen, and Jensen begins to rock against Jared’s hip.

“C’mon, Jen,” Jared groans. “That’s enough. Just do it. Get in there. It’s been way too long.”

Yes, it really has.

Jensen pulls his fingers out and wipes them on the sheets before opening the condom and rolling it on. He taps Jared on his hip and Jared gets his knees under him, but keeps his chest down on the mattress. His ass is raised high, his legs spread and Jensen places the sheathed tip of his cock against Jared’s slick pink hole and then slides slowly inside. Jared groans, long and loud, and pushes back against him, and Jensen grasps his hips and grinds in deep. Jared is warm and tight around him and this is life, this is _real_. Jensen needs Jared to be closer. He sits back on his haunches and hauls Jared up so that he’s sitting on Jensen’s lap. Jared turns his head and Jensen kisses him, lips against lips, pressing and licking. He takes hold of Jared’s cock and begins to stroke it, and Jared lifts and lowers, screwing himself on Jensen’s dick.  It’s quiet in the _yali_ , the only sounds the slap of skin on skin, the squelching of bodies coming together and low moans of pleasure. Jensen can feel his orgasm building. He strips Jared’s dick fast, gripping him tightly, twisting his wrist on each upstroke and flicking his thumb over the fat head of Jay’s cock. Jay’s breathing hard now, gasping and moaning, and Jensen can feel him tightening around his cock. He thrusts up hard, and Jared comes, wetting Jensen’s hand. The incredible squeezing tightness milks Jensen’s own orgasm from him and he cries out against Jared’s lips, lazily circling his hips until he comes down from the high.

Jensen holds Jared close and they enjoy the slow wet press of lips and tongues until the way they’re twisted together starts to get uncomfortable. Reluctantly, Jensen pulls out and gets up, padding across to the bathroom, rolling off the condom and dumping it in the trash. He looks up at the mirror and wipes a hand across his five o’clock shadow. His face has matured in the last few years; even without the beard he doesn’t look like some pretty-boy underwear model anymore. He wonders if Jared really does prefer him without the beard or if he was just saying that.  He wonders how long they’ve got until Morgan hunts them down. Jensen sighs. Right now is the calm before the storm. They’d better make the most of it.


	6. Chapter 6

Jared is laying on his back on their bed, with one knee bent, his arms folded above his head and his eyes closed. Jensen kind of can’t help himself. He takes a running jump and bounces onto the bed beside his lover.

Jared opens his eyes. “Dork,” he says fondly.  

Jensen grins. “Yeah, but I’m your dork.”

Jared rolls onto his side. “Do you think Morgan’s gonna come after us?”

“Yeah. And this time I think there’ll be a big show trial before,” Jensen makes a gun with his thumb and forefinger and then places it against his head.

Jared’s eyes widen. “Everyone knows how much good we do; everyone knows who’s really to blame for all the shit on Mars. If he says a whole bunch of crap about us and then, you know,” he imitates Jensen’s gun gesture, “then the rebellion is only gonna get worse.”

Jensen reaches out and entwines his fingers with Jared’s. “If it does, then he just gets to crack down on the population even more. You gotta realize, Jay, everyone on _Mars_ may know what’s going on, but the show trial wouldn’t be for us. It’d be for Earth. And no-one on Earth realizes how bad things are here. Down there, we’re being painted as the bad guys. Most of the shit that Morgan does to the workers gets blamed on the Rebels.”

Jared’s eyes widen even further. “The people on Earth can’t believe that, right?”

Jensen’s mouth is a grim line. “They believe what they’re told and the media on Earth is in Morgan’s pocket. People turn on the HV and what they see is a report telling them that the Martian rebels destroyed part of the Lower Dome; they see lots of footage of dead Martians and Morgan looking all concerned citizen while he promises to stamp out the terrorist rebels. No-one on Earth even stops to consider that maybe part of the Lower Dome collapsed and killed all those people because Morgan Corp didn’t want to waste time venting gases safely when they could be digging up profits.”

Jared’s eyes are liquid with concern. “Then we need to get the truth out there; need to let everyone on Earth know what’s really going on here.”

Jensen bites at his bottom lip. “I’m not sure they’d care,” he says. “So long as they get their fast, cheap energy and the materials to make their electronic components, I think they’re willing to turn a blind eye to the abuses we’re suffering here on Mars. We’re ‘the other’. And the fact that so many of us are mutants just makes it even easier for them to believe that we’re less than human. And if we’re not really human, if we’re not like them, then it’s easier for them to believe that we’re the bad guys. It makes them feel less guilty when they turn their backs on us.”

Jared shakes his head. “I don’t believe that. People are basically decent. Maybe they get scared sometimes, and lash out at things they don’t understand, but if they knew down on Earth what was really going on up here, they’d care.”

Jensen sighs. “You’ve got more faith in humanity than I do, Jared.”

Jared leans in and kisses him gently. “Liar. I can read your mind, remember.”

Jensen decides that he’s had enough of heavy topics so he grins and waggles his eyebrows, and counts on Jared skimming his thoughts.

Jared laughs. “Oh really?” he says. “We can do that. We should probably shower first, though.”

They shower and wash thoroughly and Jensen decides that he can’t wait to make good on the promise he’d thought at Jared and ends up falling to his knees under the cascading water and eating Jared out until the younger man is a whimpering mess, begging for a hand on his cock. Jensen finally relents and stands up, sliding easily into the younger man and then reaching around and fisting his hard, hot dick. After all the teasing, Jared comes quickly and when he’s done, Jensen presses him into the glass of the shower wall and fucks him hard and fast, pulling out at the last moment and coming over the globes of his ass, before washing the spunk away.

They dry off and dress in sweats and tees and Jensen spots a platinum ring sitting on the table next to the bed. He picks it up and turns it over in his hand, remembering the day that he and Jared exchanged rings and promised each other forever. It wasn’t legal, of course, but it meant something to them.

He also remembers the last time he took the ring off, just before he left to go on that final, fateful mission.

He feels Jared come up behind him and then his lover reaches around and takes the ring from his hand.

“Allow me,” Jared says and slides the ring onto Jensen’s finger.  Jensen swallows. He doesn’t trust himself to speak right now.

“C’mon,” Jared links their hands together and leads him into the kitchen.

Jared rounds up a loaf of flatbread, and a bunch of dried meats, pickles and cheeses. He dumps them on the dining table while Jensen fetches plates and cutlery and then inspects the contents of the fridge.

“Next time we go shopping,” Jensen says, “we should get some beer.”

Jared stills and then turns to stare at him. “Beer?” he says. “You don’t like beer.”

“Yes I do.”

Jared frowns. “I don’t know how many times I’ve heard you say, ‘beer tastes like cold piss’. Now, suddenly, you like it?”

Jensen scowls. “I don’t know, okay! Dean likes it. So I can remember liking it. But I can also remember not liking it. I just want to have a freakin’ beer and see whether I like it or not, okay?”

“Of course it’s okay,” Jared said calmly. “Now come over here and tell me if you still like moldy cheese.”

Jensen stays beside the fridge for a beat and then makes his way over to the table and sits down across from Jared. “I’m sorry,” he says. “This whole Dean/Jensen thing is a little confusing. I’m trying to keep him in his own private box inside my head, but sometimes he gets out, and then I’m not entirely sure who I am for a minute.”

Jared just listens and nods and then hands Jensen a piece of flatbread slathered with crumbly blue-veined cheese.

The sharp, creamy taste bursts across his tongue and Jensen raises his eyebrows and nods. “Good,” he says. “Misha made it, right?”

“You can tell that, just from the taste?”

Jensen launches into a lecture about cheese making techniques and Jared smiles at him fondly. Jensen’s far too astute not to realize what Jared just did and he’s very grateful to his partner for giving him an opportunity to remember his own tastes and access his own memories.

“Maybe you and Misha should start brewing beer,” Jared says impishly.

Jensen tilts his head. “Maybe. Craft beer and micro-breweries are pretty popular in the Upper District on Earth.”

“Give it a go,” Jared says. “And if you fuck it up, hey, at least we’ll have some bottle bombs for the cause, right?”

Jensen throws a pickle at him.

Jared’s i-band chirps and Jared answers it in visual mode. A hologram of Misha appears in the room.

“Well hello you two crazy love-birds,” Misha says. “Jensen,” he cocks his head. “I think I liked you better _with_ the beard. Hope you enjoyed your vacation on Earth, because shit’s about to get hectic.”

“It wasn’t a vacation, asshole,” Jensen growls, even though he knows that Misha’s just trying to get a rise out of him. “I had my life stolen.”

“Well Morgan wants to steal it again,” Misha says. “Permanently this time. He cut off the air to Venusville about five minutes ago and then rode in on his broomstick to send us a ‘Surrender Dorothy’ message.” The Misha holo runs a hand through its messy hair and looks grim. “Morgan says the air is gonna stay off until you two give yourselves up.”

Jensen draws in a deep shuddering breath. He’d known this moment would come; had made his peace with it. He just hadn’t realized it would come so soon. He glances at Jared. Not even a lifetime spent with Jared would be enough. He’d need several at least. He reaches out blindly and pulls his lover into a hug. He’s not ashamed to admit that he’s scared.

\--

Jensen was recruited by the Martian arm of the Galactic Intelligence and Security Agency straight out of college. He’d done a double bachelor degree; Criminal Justice-Law Enforcement and Psychology; and then he’d done a Masters in Homeworld Security and Inter-planetary Issues. He’d also worked his father’s connections, played croquet with the right people and taken the right internships. Mars Intelligence was the employer he’d been molding himself for and he’d been delighted when they approached him.

At 24, after ten years exile on Earth, he was ready to head home. Maybe Mars wasn’t his planet of birth, but it was the home planet of the people he considered his true family; the planet where he’d spent most of his childhood; and it was dying under the weight of all the corruption. He wanted to _do_ something. To fix things.

He’d been so young and naïve.

Jensen learned quickly that Morgan Corp owned Mars Intelligence, as well as the rest of Mars, and that he was never going to be able to disable the corruption on Mars from within the system. So Jensen kept his ear to the ground and eventually, he heard rumblings about the MRA. As best as he could figure, they were some kind of underground resistance group, although just exactly what they did, he couldn’t quite work out.

Unfortunately Jensen’s interest in the MRA came to the notice of Jensen’s boss, Director of Mars Intelligence, Amanda Tapping. The more Morgan Corp squeezed the populace for profits, the more people talked about The Angel, The Boyking and the MRA. Graffiti began to appear. Mining equipment began to break down. Production kept being halted. Profits began to suffer. 

Because Jensen already had some contacts; people who knew people who knew people; and because those people seemed willing to talk to him, Tapping assigned him the task of infiltrating the MRA and bringing them down.

That had been a little over four and a half years ago. It had taken him eighteen months to work his way into the inner circle and then another six months to decide that he could trust Jared with the truth. It took him a further year to persuade Jared into his bed and that’s when Jared confessed that they’d been on to him from the start.

“Psychics, man,” he’d shrugged. “Not much gets past people who can read your mind. Although it took us a while to realize that you actually, genuinely wanted to help us; you kept that buried pretty deep.”

Jensen shrugged. “Mars Intelligence employs psychics too. I had to be careful. Luckily, psychics are just people, and people are usually happy to believe what they want to believe. Most of the time they’ll take the stuff on the surface at face value if it fits what they think they know.”

 Jared nodded. “I’ve gotta be honest, once we’d seen the incriminating stuff on the surface of your mind we didn’t bother to dig too deep either.”

Jared had then gone on to explain that Loretta had done a deep probe shortly after Jensen first told them the truth, to confirm that he genuinely wanted to help the MRA and to make sure that Mars Intelligence hadn’t implanted any psychic time bombs in his head.

Before Jensen was arrested and charged with treason, he’d been really and truly in; a trusted member of the MRA. He’d even had his own code name—The Jackal—which sounded all kinds of badass, but was actually just based on his name in a deliberate ‘fuck you’ to his father.

Still, despite the year and a half that he’d spent as Jared’s partner and a member of the inner circle, he’d known that there were things he didn’t know about; a clearance level that he didn’t have.

So right now, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Jensen’s mind is completely blown.

“But,” he says, looking around at the massive bio-dome set up inside an impressively large cavern, “this can’t possibly be part of the main Dome structure.”

“It’s not,” Misha says gleefully. “And nor are any of the Resistance quarters, as far back as the second secret door. Our great grandparents set all this up themselves with parts pilfered from the Spare Parts storage unit. We’ve been building for three generations. This part,” he gestures at the hydroponic farm that Jensen calculates has to be at least sixty square feet, “is only known about by a handful of people.”

“Nine,” Jared says.

Misha regards him coolly. “And some of our people have nine fingers,” he says. “So handful is appropriate.”

“I was just clarifying the exact number for Jensen,” Jared says. “Although I guess now that he knows about it too, it’s actually ten.”

“And we’re about to make it a lot more,” Misha says. All the levity is gone from his demeanour and his blue eyes are suddenly commanding and intense.   

“Is there more on the other side of the farm?” Jensen asks.

Misha nods. “A lot more.” He leads them through the farm, which is growing an impressive array of produce, and even has a beehive, which Misha coos at rather alarmingly. There’s a sliding door into a sally port and then another sliding door into what can only be described as an empty Dome town.

Jensen whistles. “This is amazing. Morgan has no idea that this is all here. You guys could secede; become completely self-sufficient.”

“That’s the plan,” Jared says. “This section isn’t quite ready yet, but it’s close enough.” He turns to Misha. “We should join Jim and the others and talk tactics.”

When the Holo image of Misha had told them that Morgan was demanding their surrender in return for turning the air back on in Venusville, Jensen had started to mentally prepare himself for death. He wasn’t okay with voluntarily handing himself over for execution; far from it. And he was even less okay with the thought of Jared dying. But he could never put his life before the lives of the thousands of men, women and children who lived in Venusville. When he asked Misha how long Morgan was giving them, Misha rolled his eyes and told Jensen that he was being far too melodramatic. And then he told them to meet him at the back wall, which turned out not to be wall, but rather yet another secret door.

Jared and Jensen are lagging behind Misha, because Jensen is so busy boggling at everything. He can’t believe all this got built right under his nose. By the time they get to a small room, furnished only with a conference table, Misha is already sitting at its head. Jared goes and sits down next to him and motions Jensen toward the seat beside him.

Jensen takes careful note of the other people in attendance: Sam Ferris and Charles Malik Whitfield who are Resistance Security; Felicia Day and Chad Lindberg who are IT; Loretta Devine, the Resistance’s most powerful psychic; and Steve Williams and Jim Beaver. Jensen’s not quite sure what Steve and Jim do for the Cause.

He walks around the table and hugs Felicia. He remembers Dean meeting her and he knows she must have found it painful to look at a guy wearing his face who wasn’t him and who didn’t remember her.

“Jensen?” she says and he nods. Her face breaks into a wide smile and she squeezes him tighter. “Welcome home, soldier,” she says.

He thanks her before taking his seat beside Jared.

Jensen is welcomed to the _inner_ , inner circle. He’s welcomed back to himself and there’s a brief de-briefing about his Ghosting, primarily so that Loretta can reassure a very skeptical Steve that Jensen isn’t any kind of psychic danger to them; that they can trust everything that’s in his noggin; even the Dean bits.

Steve grudgingly accepts Loretta’s expertise in the area and the discussion moves to the people of Venusville who are rapidly using up their little remaining air.

Misha has a plan and Jensen has to admit that it’s (mostly) a good one. As soon as the meeting breaks up, the MRA will begin moving people into the New Dome a few at a time. Morgan Corp has the whole area under CCTV surveillance, but some of the MRA operatives currently out there in Venusville are going to shoot out the cameras in a ‘fuck you, you don’t get to watch us die’ kind of gesture that Morgan won’t find out of character. Morgan Corp will figure that they can still monitor the life sign readings anyway, so when life signs start disappearing, they’ll just figure that people are dying.

When all the life signs are gone, the MRA will blow up Venusville in a way that doesn’t expose the rest of the Dome to any danger, but does put a sizeable amount of rubble between the Original Dome and the New Dome, effectively sealing the MRA and the people they’ve rescued in their own separate silo.    

“We should take holo footage,” Jared says, “as proof of what Morgan Corp is actually doing here.”

Jensen nods his agreement. “How do we plan to access the Original Dome going forward?” he asks. “Because I’d bet money that at some point we’re going to need to rescue more people from over there.”

Steve looks to Misha and at his nod, Steve explains about the bio-dome construction they’ve put together inside the lava tunnels on the far side of the Mine. “Once we blow Venusville and lose our direct connection to the Original Dome, we’ll have to put our suits on to get to the tunnels,” Steve says, “but once we’re in there, we can get through to the rest of the Original Dome via the mines. It’s how we plan to liaise with Alona Tal and her team.”

“Alona?” Jensen doesn’t know the name.

“My step-daughter,” Sam Ferris says. “Dean knows her as Jo Harvelle.”

 Jensen raises an eyebrow. “So she’s not really a Chief Engineer?”

Sam looks highly unamused. “Of course she is. She’s also a member of the Resistance. Did you stop being a real spy when you started working for us?”

Jensen wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, kinda. I was an undercover operative. I don’t really get to do that anymore. But, I take your point,” he turns back to Steve. “So you’re what? The Chief Bio Dome Engineer?”

Steve nods. “My Great Granddaddy built the Original Dome, was out there every day in the field supervising. Of course, we didn’t realize back then that exposure to the dust would cause mutations. When his kids were born mutants, the family was bounced down to the Lower Dome. My granddaddy and my daddy didn’t get no proper College schooling, but they taught me everything I know. I did get a little schooling, which is how I met Jim,” he nods at the bearded man sitting next to Misha.

“Are you an Engineer too?” Jensen asks.

Jim shakes his head. “Chief Agriculturist. And non-mutant. I was born in the Middle Dome, met Steve at college and, well, let’s just say I didn’t like the rampant Muto-phobia he faced. He really opened my eyes to the corruption here on Mars and, well, the rest, as they say, is history.”

Jensen nods. He can relate to Jim’s story. 

Turning back to Steve, Jensen licks his lips. “I don’t mean any disrespect, but having to suit up and go topside to get people out of the Original Dome seems like pretty poor strategy. It won’t do for large scale movement of people.”

“I know,” Steve says, “but until we can remove Morgan Corp from power here, it’s the best we can do.”

“Morgan Corp is out there right now,” Jared says, his fist pounding on the table, “killing thousands of our people. Not just armed rebels, but children and nursing moms and old folk. Surely, if the President on Earth knew the abuses that were going on here, he’d withdraw his support of Morgan. Surely.”

“What makes you think he doesn’t know?” Jensen asks. “And what makes you think he’d have any interest in seeing proof? Don’t forget, Morgan funded his campaign.”

Jared shakes his head and Jensen can see his despair. Jared has a good heart. He always wants to believe the best of people. Jensen, though, he knows how cruel and uncaring people can be; especially those whose chief desire is power.

“He still needs people to vote for him,” Jared says stubbornly. “If we show the people what Morgan’s up to out here, the President’ll have to take action against him, even if he is a major campaign donor.”

“Sure,” Jensen says, “let’s get the media on that. Oh, wait. Morgan owns the media.”

Felicia clears her throat. “Satellite transmissions can be hacked Jensen.”

“Remotely?”

Felicia licks her lips. “Maybe,” she looks at Misha who nods.

“Get on that,” Misha says. “Both of you,” he nods at Chad too, “see what you can do.” He pauses, head tilted. “Sam and Charles; put together a rescue crew. Bring over a few people at a time, like we discussed. Jim and Steve; get a team together to get the New Dome ready to go live. Jared, I want you and Jensen to get holo footage of Venusville, close ups of the ventilation systems so viewers will be able to see they’ve been shut off. Show the people’s suffering. Show us rescuing them. Any questions, anyone?”

There’s a general shaking of heads and then people begin to slip out. Misha gestures Jensen back down into his seat when he goes to stand. Jared hovers, looking at Jensen questioningly and Jensen lets him know with just a glance that he’s okay, that Jared can go and start getting organized and Jensen will meet him back at home.

Misha sits with his head cocked and stares at Jensen like a man who has nothing better to do with his time.

“I’m fine, Misha,” Jensen says.

They’re not close and they don’t know each other well, although they do share an appreciation of good cheese. It had actually taken Jensen a very long time to work out that Misha was in charge. As best as Jensen can tell he manages things by wandering vaguely about with his hands in his pockets, having coffee with people, and casually reading their minds.

Blue eyes stare into green.

Jensen refuses to fidget or look away.

Misha slaps his hands down on the table and grins. “Good talk,” he says. “And Jared’s right; we should definitely start a micro-brewery.”

Jensen blinks and then raises an eyebrow. “Are we done?”

“Yes,” Misha says gravely. “We’re done.”  

Jensen gets to his feet. “Okay then,” he says and makes his way to the door of the conference room

“Jensen?” Misha’s voice stops him with his hand on the door handle.

“Yeah?”

“You don’t remember the last mission you did with Jay.”

It’s a statement not a question so Jensen doesn’t answer. It’s mostly true; he remembers bits of the mission, but the memory of what they were doing out in the mines and whether or not they achieved their goal is still missing from his mind.

“Are you gonna tell me?” Jensen finally asks Misha.

Misha inclines his head, birdlike and assessing.

“You were looking for some ancient equipment.”

It’s like trying to get blood out of a stone.

“Did we find it?”

Misha nods. “You did. And you were able to ascertain that the equipment was damaged before you were forced to flee.”

“What was it?” Jensen asks. “Mining equipment?”

“I wonder why this particular memory is lost to you,” Misha muses.

“No clue,” Jensen shrugs. “It’s not the only gap. Are you gonna tell me what the equipment was?”

 Misha tilts his head again. “The original terra-forming equipment that Morgan Corp said was irreparably damaged in a landing accident, back when the colony was first formed.”

Pain slams into Jensen’s skull and he cries out and smacks the palm of his hand against his forehead. He’s sees the equipment, scored with laser blasts, and he shakes his head and gasps out something about sabotage. There’s a quiet flutter and then Jensen feels something soft wrap around him. He opens the eyes he hadn’t realized he’d closed and is surprised to find that Misha is standing before him with his arms encircling, but not touching him. 

“Dude,” he says, frowning. “What are you doing?”

“Wrapping you in my wings.”

Jensen’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline. “Your…wings?”

Misha tilts his head. “Can you not feel them?”

Softness tickles across his face and Jensen pulls away. “What the hell?”

“They’re not visible in this dimension,” Misha says. “Not unless you’re a psychic.”

“Can you fly?”

Misha shrugs, his expression melancholy. “I’ve never had occasion to try. The tunnels don’t really lend themselves to flight,” his face brightens. “My wings did earn me my nickname though.”

The Angel. Jensen nods. He had wondered.

“Misha? What does MRA stand for? I still can’t remember and it’s been bugging me.”

“Ah,” Misha looks sheepish. “We still can’t agree. I wanted Mars Reclamation Activists, Jim wanted Mars Rebel Agriculturalists. Or was it Revolutionary Agriculturalists?” Misha frowns. “Castiel wanted Misha’s Renegade Angels and the media decided MRA stood for Martian Rebel Army. What do you think?”

“What about the people who started all this?” Jensen asks. “Your great grandparents or whatever. Didn’t they have a name for themselves?”

 “Oh yes,” Misha nods. “Our grandparents called themselves The Concerned Citizens Committed to Completion of the Original Mission, which we felt lacked a certain pizazz for a revolutionary movement.” he shrugs. “And it doesn’t really lend itself to graffiti tags either.”

Jensen nods and then frowns. “Who’s Castiel? I don’t think I know…him? Her?”

Misha shakes his head. “You’re not ready to meet Castiel.”

Jensen waits to see if Misha will add anything, but he doesn’t, so Jensen nods and excuses himself and heads back to the _yali_ he shares with Jared; which he’s just learned isn’t actually part of the official Martian bio-dome, and how cool is that?

Jared has weapons laid out on their bed and is sitting in their midst playing around with a small hand held camera that Jensen has never seen before.

“Hey,” he looks up and smiles when Jensen walks in. It’s not quite his full-wattage smile and Jensen figures that Jared isn’t sure whether Jensen is going to be pissed that his partner didn’t tell him about the New Dome project.

“I’m an intelligence agent,” Jensen says, “I worked for Morgan Corp for four years,” his voice is shaded with disgust as it always is when he thinks about his time working for Morgan. “So I’m familiar with the concept of ‘need to know.’ Would I have liked to know about the New Dome? Hell, yeah. Did I need to know? Was my ability to do my job for the MRA compromised by not knowing about it? No. So,” he gestures at the weapons and the recorder. “How are we gonna do this?”

Jared looks at him for a beat and then nods. “I’ll record, you watch my back. I doubt that Morgan will send his black ops troops in, but if we’re gonna be wandering around in Venusville, then we’re gonna be armed.”

They change into black jeans and Kevlar vests, strap on shoulder holsters and ankle holsters and then Jared watches with hooded eyes as Jensen straps on his thigh holster.

Jensen smiles. “Down, boy,” he says. “We don’t have time.” 

Jared pulls him close and kisses him thoroughly.

“Have I ever told you how fucking sexy you look wearing that thigh holster?” he says when he pulls away.

Jensen nods. “Only every time I put it on,” he eyes Jared’s kiss-bruised mouth hungrily. He suspects his own lips look every bit as debauched and his jeans get a little bit tighter. Jared’s eyes glint and he reaches down and begins to palm Jensen through the coarse fabric.

Jensen bites back a whimper and reminds himself that he passed Christopher Heyerdahl’s ‘Withstanding Torture’ class. Although maybe, Jensen bites his lower lip, if Sergeant Heyerdahl had Jared’s puppy dog eyes and penchant for sucking Jensen’s dick he wouldn’t have graduated top of the class.

“C’mon,” he says gruffly. “We’ve gotta go.”

“But Jensen,” Jared pouts, “I really, _really_ want to suck you.”

Jensen really, _really_ wants that too, but they truly don’t have time.

“People are dying, Jared,” he says.

That’s all it takes to get Jared back on track, albeit with a very obvious reluctance to drag himself away from the bulge in Jensen’s jeans. They gather up their remaining weapons, the holo-recorder and their oxygen masks, and head out.

“Don’t think there won’t be payback for getting me like this before a job,” Jensen tells his partner, adjusting himself surreptitiously as they leave their _yali_.

Jared smirks. “Oh, I’m counting on it.”

\--

For the first ten minutes of the operation equal numbers of people move in and out of Venusville, through the tunnel into the New Dome. The first people who come through into the New Dome are MRA and have some idea what to expect as they go through the tunnel. And then it’s civilians being moved through; the ill, the young and the old first.  Chad has confirmed that the CCTV cameras are all out and he and Felicia have hacked Morgan Corp’s security system and knocked out the infrared too. The Life Signs reader is still active, but it can only detect the number of life signs within a designated area, not where exactly they are.

Jared and Jensen go into Venusville with the first group and Jensen dutifully watches Jared’s back while Jared records everything that’s happening on the handheld Holo-recorder.

He also keeps an eye on the people. Most are simply traumatized. It’s one thing to know intellectually that the Governor of Mars is a ruthless oligarch who will put profits before people every time; it’s quite another to have him deliberately try to kill your entire town as a means to an end.  Some of the people sagging listlessly on the floor and trying to keep their breathing shallow, are obviously angry and Jensen has Jared take still shots of them. Jensen will talk to Charles and Sam about recruiting them for Security, or at the very least keeping an extra close eye on them. Loretta and her team of Psychics will have their work cut out for them, counselling all these traumatized people.

“Jared,” one of the security staff approaches quietly. “We’ve got a problem with a group of people down this way. Could do with a psychic to keep an eye on the mindset and maybe influence the ringleaders.”

Jared lowers the camera and he and Jensen follow the security officer to a small gathering of men, women and children sitting inside a house of worship.

Jensen swears under his breath. “Please don’t tell me they’re refusing to leave; that they think the Lord’s gonna save ‘em.”

“No, nothing like that,” the security officer says. “These guys all have spouses, parents, what-have-you who are on shift down at the mine right now. They want to know if they’re going to be able to reunite with them at some point.”

“Fuck,” Jensen touches his ear-piece. “Felicia, any chatter at Morgan Corp about the workers who are on shift in the mine right now?”

Felicia says she’ll let him know. Jared meanwhile, is moving through the people, sharing his oxygen mask with those who aren’t doing so well and getting people’s stories. Jensen watches him work with the sappy feeling of adoration that Jared’s kindness always invokes in him.  

“He’s yours?” a woman looks up at him from where she’s sitting on the floor beside a pew. She’s tiny, Jensen doubts she’s more than four and a half foot, and she has the exquisite features of an ebony porcelain doll, face framed with black ringlets.

“Yeah,” Jensen says.

The woman smiles. “My girl’s in the mine. And when we’re all…gone, Morgan’s gonna be down a shit-ton of mine workers. You really think he’s gonna let them stop working?”

“What’s your name?” he asks and she tells him that it’s Shandy.

“We’ve got people on it,” Jensen says. “Dying in here ain’t gonna help your girl any. Let us get you safe, and then let us get them safe.”

His words seem to reassure both Shandy and a number of the people sitting nearby. They allow the security people to move them to safety and Jared comes across and wraps an arm around Jensen’s waist. “Look at you,” he says, “being ‘Mr People Skills’.”

Jensen rubs self-consciously at his chin. “Yeah. Well. Just channelling my inner-Dean. He was a bit better with people than I am.”

Jensen’s i-band beeps and when he answers it, the news isn’t good. Felicia hacked Morgan Corp’s HR records and found out that Morgan is planning to keep the current mine shift working until a shipment of replacement Ghost workers arrives from Earth. She also hacked into the Dome Newsfeed, which Venusville has been cut off from, and learned that Morgan has the media blaming the MRA for the Venusville lockdown. “The official word is that _we’ve_ cut off the air and that _we’re_ threatening to kill everyone if Morgan doesn’t hand over control of the Mines to us. Apparently we’ve rigged the whole place to blow so that if Morgan’s troops attempt a rescue, everyone will die.”

Jensen looks around at the people they’ve got laying charges. “Semi-accurate,” he says with a shrug.

Felicia huffs. “Misha says to finish up the relocation as planned and then meet back in the conference room for another planning meeting.”

Jared and Jensen finish recording the evacuation and then help to move as many useful supplies to the New Dome as they can manage. The security guys are still rigging Venusville to blow and Jensen finds himself a lot more interested in the process than he would’ve been, pre-Ghosting. Jensen only has basic explosives training and he blames his inner-Dean for the fact that he gravitates to the side of one of the explosives experts and starts asking questions.

“Didn’t know you were interested in explosives,” Jared says, coming across and slinging a possessive arm around Jensen’s shoulders.

“Sure,” Jensen says, not missing the evil eye that Jared casts over the explosives guy. He slips a hand around Jared’s waist. “Who doesn’t like things that go bang?” he asks with a truck load of false innocence. 

The explosives guy clears his throat. “Y’all might like to head back to the New Dome, if you’ve finished your own jobs. We like to clear all non-essential personnel from the area before we go boom.”

“C’mon, Jay,” Jensen murmurs. “We’ll have our own private explosion later.”

Jared swallows and if Jensen puts a little bit more of a swagger into his exit than strictly necessary, it’s only because he knows that Jared’s staring at his ass and he does owe the man a little payback, after all.

\--

It’s organised chaos in the New Dome.

The area where the refugees were camped out earlier has been cleared of people and is now being used for storage. In the brand new area that has just been opened for business, there are people everywhere. There are MRA members with clipboards assigning housing and first aiders helping out those who are still suffering breathing difficulties. There are Psychics moving through the crowds calming and reassuring people. Even so, there are some tears and the occasional squabble. Mostly though, people are stunned; at the staggering scale of Morgan’s Corp’s betrayal; at the impressive scope of the MRA’s secret New Dome project.

When Jared and Jensen join the rest of the inner circle in the conference room, the mood is grim. As soon at they’re seated, Felicia wastes no time.

“The supply ship carrying the Ghost workers is scheduled to arrive in ten days. Until then, the workers currently on shift will be kept hopped up on Provigil and worked until they drop. Also, we hacked into the Main Dome Newsfeed again. Out there, we’re being blamed for Venusville and Ambassador Ackles,” she gives Jensen an apologetic look, “has been on the Holo conveying Earth’s full support for any action the Governor needs to take to deal with the ‘terrorist threat’ posed by the MRA.”

Jensen feels everyone’s eyes on him as he stares a hole in the top of the table. “Not unexpected,” he says. His voice has to navigate the lump in his throat and it comes out harsher than he intended. “Morgan’ll declare martial law next.”

“How are we going to get the miners out?” Jared asks.

The grim reality of the situation is that they can’t.  Once they blow up Venusville there’s just no easy way to move large numbers of people from the Original Dome into the New Dome.

“Can we halt the detonation?” Jared asks.

Charles shakes his head. “We need to prevent Morgan’s troops from moving into the area and not seeing a bunch of dead bodies. We’ve gotta blow the place and,” he checks his i-band, “we’ve gotta do it soon.”

“We attack the mine,” says Sam. “We blow Venusville and, at the same time, we send an assault force out in suits to get into the mine through the lava tunnels. We take the workers ‘hostage’ so that they can’t be forced to work.”

There is a general murmur of approval, but Jensen shakes his head. “And then what? What happens when the Ghost workers turn up and the ‘hostages’ become expendable?”

“By then,” Jared says, lifting his chin defiantly, “we’ll have got the word out about what’s really going on here. Right Felicia?”

Felicia’a shoulders are hunched and her eyes flick first to Jared’s, then to Jensen’s.

“Yeah, about that. The satellite that handles interplanetary transmissions isn’t networked.”

“What does that mean?” Jared asks.

“It means,” Jensen says, “that someone has to go into Morgan Corp and initiate a transmission from inside the satellite control room.”


	7. Chapter 7

Jensen is half way across the dusty red sand in between the mountains that house the Bio Domes and the lava tunnels on the far side of the Pyramid mine, when Venusville blows up.  He staggers forward and almost loses his footing, but Jay’s hand shoots out to press against his hip, helping him stay upright.

There are twelve of them making their way across the expanse of rocky red dirt to the lava tunnels and Jensen hopes that the explosion is enough of a distraction that no-one looking down from the Upper Dome notices their passage. Their suits are painted rusty red for camouflage and there’s enough of a dust storm to cut visibility substantially, but thankfully not enough of a storm to make being outside dangerous. The wind is fairly gentle and the dust levels are well within the limits that their space suits can cope with.

Dust storms are a fact of life on Mars and they range from fairly benign storms like the one today to planet-wide dust hurricanes. There are frequent dust devils on Mars too, small swirling dervishes that are visible from the upper and middle levels of the Dome on a daily basis. The tornados are less frequent, but they can be terrifying. The small ones—no more than a mile high—aren’t so bad, but the big ones, the ones that tower 12 miles into the sky; when they hit the Dome it’s like something out of the Badlands on Earth.    

Genevieve Cortese, who’s leading the assault team, holds up a hand and the troop comes to a halt. They’re walking single file to hide their numbers and Jensen watches from his place at second-from-the-rear as a small dust devil whirls across their path. A second one follows, just a little up ahead and Gen cocks her head to one side.  She’s a small dark-haired woman with two keratin lumps on her forehead, and her toes are all fused together and encased in keratin too. Add in her small tail and it’s easy to see why people with her set of mutations are nicknamed demons.

Gen is a close friend of Jared’s and growing up she and all her demon friends, siblings and cousins spent so much time following Jared around that it earned him the nickname the Boyking.  Jensen understands it completely. There’s something about Jared that makes people want to be in his orbit; people just gravitate to his warm, friendly nature. Jensen had initially thought that Jared and Gen were an item and he can admit now, he’d been a little bit jealous. Jared had laughed when Jensen had referred to her as his girlfriend and told him very solemnly that Jared and _Jen_ was far more likely than Jared and _Gen_ , which had confused the hell out of Jensen until Jared had rolled his eyes and explained that while he was pansexual like most mutants, he tended to lean toward partners with a penis because he really, _really_ liked being fucked.

Jensen grins to himself behind his face mask. Jared had disappeared with a gaggle of demon friends after making that pronouncement and left Jensen achingly hard and not entirely sure whether Jared was interested in him specifically or not. Several weeks of flirting and innuendo had followed until, finally, high on adrenalin after a well-executed job, Jensen had backed Jared against a wall and kissed the living daylights out of him. Jared had told him that it was about damn time and then he’d—

Behind him, Jared clears his throat and says, very quietly, “Dude. You’re broadcasting.”

There’s a snigger from somewhere up ahead and Jensen sighs and tries to shore up his mental defences. Goddamn psychics.

The party arrives at the entrance to the lava tunnel and Gen’s second-in-command, Ty Olssen, keys in the code to slide back the fake rock fascia and then opens the reinforced steel airlock door and ushers everyone into the sally port.

Once everyone is inside, Ty pulls a hand-held dustbuster out of his pack and cleans up every trace of dust clinging to the outside of everyone’s suits and packs, and whatever dust had blown inside when the door was open.

Breathing in Martian dust is not good. It’s a very fine red powder and contains perchlorates, gypsum, silicates, turbinium and virosuspulvis all of which can make a person sick or dead or trigger genetic mutations.

Once every trace of the red dust is gone, everyone takes off their space suit and Ty opens the airlock on the other side of the sally port. Each member of the party makes their way past him and into the tunnel beyond.

“Jensen,” Ty nods at Jensen as he passes. “You look younger and way cuter _without_ the beard,” he eyes the grey overalls with the Morgan Corp logo on the top pocket that Jensen is wearing and grins. “Oh baby, you can come fix my air filters any time.”

Jensen rolls his eyes. Ty is a big bear of a man and they’d played around some when Jensen had first been trying to find a way into the MRA.  Of course, like most of the big, well-built men who Jensen has fooled around with, he’d taken one look at Jensen’s wide green eyes and full plush lips and assumed that Jensen would bottom.  Once they’d cleared up that misunderstanding, it was obvious they weren’t going to be compatible, but they managed to stay good friends.

“Never gonna happen, Ty,” Jensen says, and Jared glares at the man until he holds his hands up in apologetic surrender.

“All right, people,” Gen says. “Let’s do this!”

They all put on their facemasks, un-holster their weapons, and begin the descent into the mine.

The Pyramid mine is one mile deep and covers a total area of around 2,000 acres. There are two main tunnels, each one five miles long and ten yards wide, and those tunnels are connected by twenty-four cross-tunnels with numerous cavernous offshoots all over the place.

The MRA has created its own access tunnel into an old abandoned offshoot of the mine where the turbinium has all been extracted.

Once they’re in, they edge carefully into main tunnel number one and follow the sound of hydraulic excavators until they come to the current extraction site.

“Nobody move!” Ty bellows. “We’re here to take possession of this mine for the MRA!”

In the chaos that follows, Jensen and Jared slip away. They jog down the hollowed-rock tunnel, Jared in the lead, and the sound of their footfalls is completely obscured by the deafening thrum of the big drills and hydraulic excavators and by all the gunfire.  

Jensen keeps his eyes focused on the long grey-clad legs jogging ahead of him and is hit by a sudden sense of déjà vu. He ducks reflexively, expecting bullets to start zinging into the rock walls beside him and then swallows hard when Jared reaches up and yanks the filter cover off the air duct in the tunnel’s ceiling. Jared hauls himself up into the duct space and Jensen watches his strength appreciatively. Still, this is where it all went wrong last time, and when Jay reaches a hand down to pull him up Jensen can’t help looking around furtively before he takes it.  His hand aches in memory, but there is no bullet this time, no security personnel forcing him to his knees at gunpoint. With Jared’s help Jensen drags himself into the air duct and then they check the schematics before starting the long crawl toward the Middle Dome’s maintenance workshop.

They make good time and arrive above the workshop after only an hour of crawling through the duct space.  Jensen sits and waits while Jared does his thing; well…one of his things, anyway. He has many things that he does, some of them a lot of fun, like that thing he does with his tongue where—

“Dude!” Jared hisses, voice soft but clearly irritated. “Not helping. I’m trying to focus.”

Jared is currently reading the minds of everyone down in the workshop; learning who they are and what they know and getting a feel for their minds so they’ll be easier to manipulate later. There’s not much for Jensen to do but watch their six as Jared leans down over the air vent and concentrates. Jensen does his best not to let his mind wander to places that might break that concentration.

“Okay,” Jared says eventually. “No mutants or psychics down there. The co-ordinator is called Chandra and she just sent the last team of engineers out on a job, so now is a good time to go down.”

The fewer people Jared has to manipulate, the better. He really can’t do more than four at a time and manipulating that many people in one hit really takes it out of him.

Between them, they remove the cover of the air duct and then Jared swings himself down into the workshop below, his bulging shoulder muscles visible, even through the thick fabric of his overalls. He hangs for a moment and then drops as lightly as a cat onto the floor below. Jensen’s drop isn’t quite as controlled, the four inch height difference between them making a difference.

Jared smiles at him. “Follow my lead,” he murmurs, before straightening and heading into the workshop’s small office.

Jensen follows him and watches as the co-ordinator’s face registers surprise and alarm, before smoothing into blankness and then, at last, recognition.

“Sam, right?” she says.

Jared grins, wide and goofy. “You finally remembered! That’s a lot better than New Guy,” he leans forward and smiles conspiratorially and Jensen almost laughs at the way Chandra melts under his gaze. “You got a job for us?” he asks.

“Not right now,” Chandra shakes her head regretfully.

“Really?” Jared gives her the puppy dog eyes. He looks so sad that Chandra logs into the maintenance system again, just to have another look for service calls. There aren’t any, but Jared manipulates her mind into believing that she can see a new maintenance call for an air filtration system in the Upper Dome. He then puts her into a trance while he creates a work order that gives them permission to enter the municipal area of the Upper Dome, where all of the utility departments are situated, as well as the Courthouse, the head office of Morgan Corp, the Mars Intelligence Agency and the Ambassador’s residence. He also creates a couple of new ID badges, one for Sam Campbell and one for Alec McDowell.

Jared leans down and whispers in Chandra’s ear, “When I snap my fingers, you’ll wake up. You won’t remember seeing me or my partner.”

She nods vaguely, her expression vacant.

They head out into the hallway and Jared turns and snaps his fingers. Chandra blinks and begins to stir and they hurry away.

“You and your Jedi mind tricks,” Jensen snorts when they’re well away. “One day you’re gonna get the opportunity to say ‘these aren’t the droids you’re looking for’ and it’s gonna be awesome.”

Jared rolls his eyes. “You and your ancient movies. Oh, hey, did you see they’re doing a holo re-make of the Star Wars movies?”

“Yeah,” Jensen says sourly. “No live actors, all digital imaging. Sacrilege,” he holds a hand out and stops Jared. “Jay… I can take it from here by myself, if you want.”

Jared’s eyes narrow. “You’re kidding.”

Jensen shakes his head. “It’s gonna be dangerous and there’s a really high possibility that we won’t come back from this—”         

“I know you’re just trying to protect me,” Jared interrupts, “but don’t.” He bites at his bottom lip. “If you don’t come back from this, I don’t want to either. I couldn’t take losing you again.”

Jensen’s expression is unreadable, but he nods. “Okay then. Let’s go and meet Chris.”

\--

Jensen stares at the front door of apartment 306, Residential Block D, North East Corridor, all too aware that this could go very wrong. He steels himself, takes a slow deep breath, and knocks on the door.

The man who opens it is stockier than Jensen remembers him. His hair is darker and it’s longer too, almost shoulder length. His eyes widen and his mouth goes completely slack, as if he’s just seen a ghost; which isn’t exactly far from the truth.

“Hey, Chris,” Jensen says. “It’s been a while.”

Chris’s eyes flick from Jensen to Jared and back again.

“Guess you better come in,” he says, and his voice twangs just the way Jensen remembers it.

He and Jared step through the door when Chris holds it wide for them and there’s a moment’s silence once the door is shut.

Chris rubs a hand over his chin and then says, “Sonofabitch. They said you’d been killed in the line of duty, fighting the Rebels,” his gaze flicks to Jared again.

Jared nods almost imperceptibly and it’s the go-ahead Jensen’s been looking for.

“Nope,” he says. “Reports of my death were a little exaggerated. But it’s a long story; you mind if we sit down?”

Chris’s apartment has three rooms; a living room/kitchen, a bathroom/laundry and a bedroom. He leads them further into the living room and directs them to a couple of cushion-seats, before filling a brazier with coals and lighting it. “Coffee?” he says, but he doesn’t wait for Jensen’s affirmative answer before getting a stone mortar and pestle down from a cupboard and beginning to grind some spicy cinnamon Martian coffee. 

Jensen holds his hand out for the mortar and pestle and Chris gives it to him to grind, while he fills a long-necked _jebena_ with water and puts three _finjal_ onto a tray.

Chris finally sits. He takes the ground coffee from Jensen and puts it on to brew.

“You still smoke?” Chris asks Jensen. “I can get the hookah out?”

Jensen stills him with a hand to his arm. “This isn’t really a social visit, Chris,” he says.

Chris nods. “When Mama said you were back, I thought… but then you didn’t visit and I heard on the grapevine that you were working for the Agency,” he shakes his head. “I couldn’t believe it. After everything….” he trails off. “But then I thought, maybe they turned you, down on Earth,” he shrugs. “And then I heard you were some kind of mole, tryin’a take down the MRA and,” Chris runs a hand over his face. “I think I hated you then.”

“I _was_ working for the Agency,” Jensen confirms. “But I wasn’t their double agent; I was the MRA’s. It wasn’t the MRA I was trying to take down, Chris; it was Morgan Corp.”

Chris’s face morphs from dejected to triumphant. “I knew it!” he crows. “I fuckin’ _knew_ it! No way my boy Jensen Ackles went darkside.”

The coffee begins to bubble and Chris pours it out.

“ _Barakah Bashad_ ,” he says.

“ _Shukriya_ ,” Jensen and Jared respond, as they pick up their cups.

 Chris inclines his head toward Jared. “Who’s the yeti?”

“My boyfriend, Jared.”

Sorrow flashes briefly across Chris’s face, but he schools his expression quickly into a friendly smile.

“I got a boyfriend too,” he says. “Steve. He’s a musician; lives down in the Lower Dome.”

Jensen fiddles with his cup. “That’s great,” he looks up and meets Chris’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Chris. I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone on Mars when I was at boarding school and when I got back here, I wanted to come and see you, I did. But I couldn’t risk it. They had to think I was completely reformed and—”

Chris cuts him off. “I get it, Jen, I do. It’s okay.” he clears his throat. “So what’s really going on in Venusville? They said on the Holo that you guys cut off the air and killed everyone before blowing the place up, but no-one believes it.”

Between them, Jared and Jensen explain what’s happening and what they’re trying to do and then Jensen explains what he needs from Chris.

\--

Alan Ackles accepted the position of Ambassador to Mars when Jensen was seven years old. Before that, Jensen’s father had been an Emissary for the Office of the President of the Unified Territories and he’d hardly ever been home, because his job involved frequent trips around the Earth, as well as to Earth’s Orbital colonies and the Colonies on Mars and Titan. It was too painful for him to stay at home, the staff would say. Amelia Ackles had been the love of his life and losing her to cancer when Jensen was just a baby had left a deep wound in Alan’s soul.

Jensen didn’t remember his mother. There was a huge painting of her that hung in the foyer of their house and he had a file on his i-band that contained a whole bunch of holograph images of her, but to him she was just the ghost that kept his father away.

In truth, Jensen didn’t know his father all that well either. He’d been raised by the household staff and secretly he thought of the housekeeper, Kim, as his mother; she was the one who soothed his nightmares; the one he ran to with his skinned knees; the one to whom he told his heartaches and triumphs. Kim Rhodes was part Martian and she was the only one of the staff who came with them when they moved to Mars. She was the one who told him stories of his parents in their younger years, how happy they’d been, told him that he reminded his father too much of his mother, that looking at him made his father sad. She also told him tales of growing up on Mars and when they landed, it felt a little to Jensen like coming home.

Jensen quickly became close to the Martian staff, and Chef Kane’s son Chris, who was only a year older than Jensen, soon became his best friend. His father disapproved, of course, but Alan worked such long hours that he could do little except frown at Jensen and lecture his son about the perils of fraternizing with those of a lower class. His father’s attitude made Jensen sick; so-called lower class people had brought him up, taught him right from wrong and been there for him in ways his father never had.

Jensen was forbidden to leave the Ambassador’s residence without half a dozen security guards, so he and Chris spent their spare time exploring the residence and its grounds at length. One day, when they’d been messing around in the root cellar, they’d found a hidden door which led to an underground passageway. The passage had come out at a utility hole cover in Melrose Laneway, where the Upper Dome’s most exclusive tailors and fashion houses had their boutiques. Chris was keen to introduce Jensen to the Middle and Lower Domes and Jensen immediately recognized the disparity between the small number of very wealthy people in the Upper Dome and the vast numbers of poor people in the Lower Dome. In the Upper Dome, there were never food or water shortages, there was never air rationing and there were never power brownouts, all of which happened regularly in the lower domes. Jensen was outraged by some of the injustices he saw and by the corruption and abuses of power he witnessed. He and Chris heard rumblings of a rebel group, but there were no obvious, overt signs of rebellion.

At fourteen, Jensen was forced to attend a State Dinner with his father. He made some pointed comments to the Chief Security Officer about the lack of access to justice in the lower domes and the Ambassador had been both embarrassed and furious with his son. He threatened to send Jensen to Boarding School on Earth, if he didn’t learn to butt out of complicated things that were beyond his understanding.

Jensen stopped speaking to his father.

The final straw for the Ambassador, though, was finding Jensen and Chris kissing.

Earth was undeniably homophobic; a lot of religious leaders preached that the rapidly worsening climate was God’s punishment for the twenty-first century’s increased acceptance of sinful lifestyles, claiming that the storms and planetary upheavals started at around the same time that same-sex marriage started to be widely allowed, and that was proof. Enough people believed them for anti-discrimination laws to be pushed back and for many gay people to retreat into the closet.  According to the Mars Mission manifesto, which was rigorously adhered to in the Upper Dome, sexual relations were to be between a man and a woman for the purposes of growing the colony.

Jensen hadn’t thought too much about it; he wasn’t interested in girls but he figured it was something that would come with time. He was only fourteen, after all. Visiting the Lower Dome and seeing same-sex couples kissing and holding hands had finally allowed Jensen to understand the giddy feelings of anticipation and the swooping excitement in his tummy whenever he saw Chris. Chris said there was no point in not being yourself when you were around psychics most of the time. He said that psychics always knew who you were and what was inside of you and that mutants knew what mattered about a person and what didn’t.  To Jensen, sexuality was just another thing that the ruling class were wrong about, another way they controlled people and denied them their rights. When he realized that his feelings for Chris were returned, he acted on it and they were soon making out as often as they could and even, occasionally, being brave enough to shower together so that they could touch each other.     

When Jensen’s father caught them in a fairly tame make out session, he immediately put Jensen on the next flight back to Earth and fired Chris. Chris, at fifteen was working as Apprentice Chef to his mother and was pretty much set for life as a privileged member of Household Staff for a VIP Upper Dome family.  After the Ambassador fired him, Chris’s mama got him a job working at one of the classier diners in the Spaceport, but he’d paid a heavy price for his relationship with Jensen. 

Jensen hopes he won’t pay an even heavier price.

Chris should be safe; all he’s given Jensen is information; confirmation that the secret passageway from the root cellar in the Ambassador’s residence out into town is still there. Felicia and Chad have already checked the building’s schematics online and it doesn’t show. It really does appear to be a bolt hole, only known about by the Ambassador and their family.  And Chris and his younger sister.  

Their IDs and the work-order get Jared and Jensen into the service personnel elevator and allow them to access the Upper Dome. They keep their heads low and their eyes on their tool boxes and no-one pays them any attention. Once they’re in the Upper Dome, it’s a different story. There are security checks on every corner and Jared has his hands full mind-whammying security officers into believing that they don’t recognize either of them. By the time they make it to the laneway where the escape tunnel comes up, Jared is sweating hard and Jensen is relieved when they’re able to lift up the utility hole cover and climb down into the underground tunnel, out of reach of prying eyes.        

They open their toolboxes and assemble their guns as soon as they’re underground and then move cautiously down the tunnel with their weapons drawn until they get to the trap door into the root cellar. Jared looks at Jensen and he nods. Jared pushes up the trap door, while Jensen covers him, but the root cellar is dark and quiet and as they make their way inside it appears they’ve gotten into the Ambassador’s residence completely undetected. From here, they’ll grab hold of Jensen’s father and force him to upload diplomatic protocols onto their i-bands, before leaving him tied up and gagged. The next step is for Jensen to change into an expensive Upper Dome suit and bluff his way into Morgan Corp Headquarters as a member of the embassy staff, with Jared in tow as a maintenance tech, who he has brought to help him with a computer problem.

They make their way up the root cellar’s stairs and into the kitchen and Jared gasps. The kitchen is four times the size of their entire _yali_ and is ornately decorated with granite and marble shipped from Earth and large chrome appliances. There’s a giant well-stocked walk-in pantry and when he sees it, Jared murmurs, “Holy shit,” under his breath.

Jensen feels all his old shame come rushing back. “I know, right?” he says. “It’s obscene.”

Jared harrumphs. “I can’t believe you gave all this up to live in an underground hole with me.”

“We don’t go hungry, Jay,” Jensen says. “And there are other things I’m hungry for that I could never get in this world. Besides, it really is obscene that some people have so much when some people have so little.”

They’re only talking quietly, but Jensen didn’t really expect to walk through Chef Kane’s kitchen undetected. Even so, her quiet gasp surprises him. He smiles at her and puts a finger to his lips. She looks uneasily at his gun, but he shakes his head and hopes she understands that he’s not here to hurt anyone. She nods and retreats to her quarters which are just off the kitchen. Chef Kane is on duty twenty-four hours a day and she has to be readily at hand in case anyone rings the bell wanting food or beverages.

The mansion is every bit as grandiose as Jensen remembers it; large spacious rooms with ornate chandeliers, tastefully decorated with stylish wooden furniture from Earth and carefully-selected works of art—paintings, tapestries and sculptures. They see a houseboy in one hallway and a maid in one of the living areas, but beyond startling briefly, both are content to simply ignore them. Jensen wonders if Chris gave his mama a heads up or if the staff here are simply pro-rebellion.

They find the Ambassador in his study, sitting at his desk chair, which is spun around facing the door.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Alan says, gesturing at the CCTV monitor behind him. “After I sent you to Earth, I heard from somebody that you’d been seen down in the Lower Dome so I figured there must be a secret way out of here that had been forgotten about. I had the place searched and when we found it, I had a security system put in.”

Jensen nods. “I thought this was all too easy. If I turn around, will Morgan’s goons be behind me, waiting to put a bullet in me?”

Alan’s expression is pained. “No-one except me and my staff know that you’re here,” he says.

Jensen is surprised and it must show on his face because Alan harrumphs and looks a little disgruntled. “I suppose I deserve that,” he says. “Look, I know we haven’t been on the best of terms, but I don’t want you dead, son.”

Jared gives Jensen an ‘I told you so,’ look and a brief nod to let Jensen know that his dad is being truthful. The Ambassador sees the look that passes between them and his lips quirk in a sad smile. “I can’t say I understand it, but you’re old enough now to know your own mind,” he rubs at the back of his neck in a gesture that Jensen does himself when he’s feeling insecure. “It took me until you came back to Mars as an adult to figure out that you were the one dragging Chris into trouble back when you were kids, not the other way around,” he looks up at Jensen and smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners and his expression almost proud. “A strong-willed trouble-maker,” he says. “Just like your mother.”

“Right,” Jensen scoffs. “That’s why you got Morgan to have me turned into a _real man_ , somebody _more like the son you always wanted_.”

Alan shakes his head. “They were going to _kill_ you, Jensen. They only way I could think of to save your life was to suggest a Ghost persona that Morgan may just believe I’d consider a favour; and one that was sufficiently amusing to him too. I probably don’t have to tell you how delighted he was by the prospect of the sophisticated, highly educated Jensen Ackles wearing plaid, working construction and thinking he hadn’t even managed to finish High School.”

Jensen’s hackles rise. “There’s nothing wrong with construction work,” he says. “It’s an honest trade. And education is a privilege that not everybody has, so—”

Alan holds up a hand to stop Jensen’s tirade. “I _know_ ,” he says. “That was Morgan’s opinion, not mine.”

Jensen isn’t quite ready to stop glaring. He truly wants to believe that he has his father’s love and support, but he has over a decade of anger and resentment to contend with.

“Yeah, well,” he sneers. “Morgan fucked up didn’t he? Implanting someone against their natural orientation can cause the implant to fail. Bet you didn’t know that, huh?”

Alan raises an eyebrow. “Of course I did, Jensen. I was counting on it.”

Jensen feels his face go slack and he’s pretty sure that his eyebrows just disappeared into his hairline too.   

“You…were?” he says. It comes out a lot more ‘little boy lost’ than he’d intended.

His father frowns. “And I say again, _they were going to kill you_. I did what I could on short notice to save your life and give you a chance to come back to yourself in time.”

“What about the trigger?” Jared speaks for the first time.

Alan looks puzzled and asks Jared what he’s talking about. Jared explains that Jensen had been programmed to kill any man he had sex with.”

“Huh,” Alan says, stroking his chin. “Maybe it was some sort of fail safe? You know, if the Ghosting failed enough for you to remember your natural orientation and act on it, then you’d end up arrested for murder.” He rubs a tired hand over his eyes. “And speaking of arrests, there are warrants out for the pair of you. The security camera in the hotel caught you,” he nods at Jared, “gunning down the security team sent to retrieve my son and it caught you, Jensen, shooting Michelle Borth.”

“Who?” Jensen frowns.

“The woman you shot point blank.”

“Carmen? You’re telling me her real name was Michelle?”

Alan shrugs. “That’s not really important right now. What’s important is the fact that you are both wanted for murder and terrorism. Your being here right now is beyond foolhardy. So why are you here?”

Alan is saddened, but not surprised, to learn that Morgan Corp was behind the Venusville deaths. Jensen doesn’t give his dad the full truth, doesn’t tell him that in fact the people of Venusville are safe in the MRA’s New Dome, because he isn’t completely sure yet that his dad can be trusted. 

But the Ambassador’s reaction does seem very genuine. He slumps in his seat and shakes his head. “I did some digging around when there was that incident in Morganville. People were saying that Morgan ordered the area cut off from the air supply, but I couldn’t find any proof.”

“We have proof,” Jensen says. “Of what happened in Morganville, of what happened in Venusville and some other atrocities too. We just need to get into the satellite control room so that we can broadcast the proof to Earth. We figure, we do that, no way will the President be able to keep ignoring what’s going on here.”

Jensen explains the way they plan to get into the satellite control room and Alan shakes his head. “You need authorisation from Morgan himself to get into that room. You’ll never get near it,” he fiddles with the cuff of his shirt. “However,” he says, “I have authorisation to enter the satellite control room. If I take you both with me, I have every confidence that I can bully the staff into letting me take my maintenance staff with me. They’ll report it to Morgan, of course, who’ll immediately figure out who you are and come after you, but it should buy you enough time to broadcast your files to Earth.”

Jensen looks at Jared, who nods, indicating that his father is telling the truth.

“Okay,” Jensen says decisively, “let’s do it.”

Alan huffs out a breath. “You realize that this is probably a suicide mission? Once we’re in that room the only way out is the way we came in. Morgan’s troops will be waiting there to arrest us all for treason. And worse in your case.”

Jensen is counting on Jared to be able to persuade the security staff outside the satellite control room that they didn’t see anyone, but he doesn’t want to let his dad know that Jared has psychic abilities until he’s absolutely sure he can trust him.

“I don’t wanna die, Dad,” he says. “Neither of us do. But Morgan has to be stopped.”

He father looks him in the eye for a very long time and then nods. “Okay,” he echoes Jensen’s earlier words. “Let’s do it.”

\--

Jensen, his father and Jared step through the heavy steel front door of the Ambassador’s residence and into a street that is far too quiet. It sets Jensen’s nerves tingling and has him reaching for his gun even before Jared cocks his head to one side and stiffens.

By the time several dozen armed security officers have stepped out of the shadows and trained their weapons on the trio, Jensen already has his gun pushed against his father’s spine.

“Put down your weapons and lay on the ground,” says the lead officer.

Jensen grips his father’s arm and jams the barrel of his gun even harder into his back. “Back away slowly,” he says, “and the Ambassador will stay safe.”

He’s bluffing, obviously. He may not trust his father entirely, but his dad didn’t turn them into the Agency; Jensen knows genuine surprise when he sees it. Jensen isn’t going to shoot his father; he just hopes Morgan’s guys don’t call his bluff.

“Put down your weapons,” the officer repeats. “Or we _will_ shoot.”

Jensen is tucked in behind his father and there’s no angle that a sharpshooter can get him from. Jared, however, is beside him, out in the open, and probably has a sniper rifle pointed at his chest right now; unlike their movie counterparts, real snipers don’t use red dots to advertise the fact that they’re poised to kill you.

Jensen licks at his lips. “The President ain’t gonna like it if his Ambassador gets his spine blown out, so I suggest you back away now.”

“Please,” Alan says. “My son’s not well. The Ghost program broke his mind. He _will_ kill me.”

The officer puts a hand to his earpiece and after a moment Jensen lip reads a ‘Yes, sir’.  

Jared lowers his head and murmurs, “Morgan’s on his way. And some guy called Sterling Brown’s coming too.”

Alan’s intake of breath is sharp and Jensen really hopes he’s genuinely on the level about being on their side, because Jared just let Alan know that he’s psychic and that’s knowledge Jensen would rather keep from their enemies.

Despite the Upper Dome being kept at a pleasant, comfortable temperature, Jensen can feel sweat running down his spine. Morgan could give the order to shoot Jared at any moment and Jensen isn’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t be prepared to gun down the Ambassador to get to Jensen.

When Morgan finally appears, Gordon is walking beside him.

And okay, Jensen had figured out that Gordon was an Agency employee, but it hadn’t even occurred to him that he might be here on Mars and not on Earth.  

Morgan is dressed in a charcoal grey silk suit, with an open-necked white shirt. His hair is artfully tousled and his salt-and-pepper beard is neatly trimmed. His wrists are weighed down by heavy silver bracelets, a hefty old-fashioned wristwatch, also silver, and he’s wearing a chunky ring on every finger.

His liquid brown eyes roam over both Jared and Jensen and Jensen thinks (not for the first time) that Morgan would have very sexy bedroom eyes if it wasn’t for the expression in them; there isn’t any. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then Morgan doesn’t have one.

“Two choices,” Morgan says. “One: I give the order and my man here shoots all three of you, right here, right now.”

Alan starts to protest but Morgan shushes him. “You’re an acceptable loss, Alan,” he says. “Collateral damage. Unfortunate, but there you go.” He turns back to Jensen. “Choice two: You and your Boy Toy give yourselves up and your father lives,” he pauses and smiles genially at Jensen. “You and the Yeti will both die, of course, but then you knew this was a suicide mission, didn’t you?” Morgan looks at his watch. “You have…thirty seconds to decide.”

Jared immediately holds his hands up in surrender and Jensen relaxes a little. Whatever Jared’s been able to pick up from the minds around them, he must feel confident that they’ve still got options, even if they give themselves up.

Jensen sets his gun down and steps away from his father, who edges back into the house. Jensen raises his arms slowly, palms out.

Morgan smiles, or at least sneers and bares his teeth. He tells them to get down on their knees and put their hands behind their heads and then nods at Gordon who steps forward, cracking his knuckles and grinning nastily.    

“Sometimes my job sucks,” Gordon, or Sterling, Jensen supposes, says. “Like that time I had to hang out with a fag for six weeks. Shoulda known when I couldn’t get you to look twice at a set of tits. Still, sometimes the job has compensations.” Jensen sees the punch coming, but the best he can do is move enough to make it a painful glancing blow rather than a knockout punch. Gordon’s follow up sends him sprawling to the ground and the kick to his stomach has him curling in on himself.

“Enough,” Morgan says, tone bored.

Sterling turns to Jared. “What sort of a freak are you?”

Jared is hunched over and doing the wide-eyed puppy dog thing. It makes him look small and vulnerable and nothing at all like the mountain of muscle and fury that gunned down half a dozen of Morgan’s elite security team.

“I got an extra toe on my left foot,” Jared says. Which is true. “And I got a twelve inch cock.” Which is…not _quite_ true.

Sterling raises an eyebrow and whistles, low and faux-impressed. He turns to Jensen, who has managed to get back up on his knees. “He fuck you good with that monster mutant cock, Fag-boy?”  

He doesn’t, that’s not how it is between them, but Jensen lets his smile turn dirty, like he’s remembering being ridden hard and put away wet. “Why?” he says to Sterling. “You jealous?”

It earns him another punch, but at least it keeps Sterling’s attention on him and away from Jared.      

“You can play later, Brown,” Morgan chides. “Search them.”

Jensen leans into Sterling’s touch and moans like it’s turning him on to have the man’s hands on him. He’s hoping to unsettle him enough that he only does a perfunctory search, but unfortunately Sterling is a professional and finds the data chip that Jensen had in the back pocket of his overalls, as well as the backup sewn into the cuff of the overalls. He finds the two that Jared has secreted in his clothing as well, and the one in his hair.

Morgan’s smile is gloating as Sterling hands him the five chips. He drops each of them in turn to the floor and grinds them all beneath the heel of his boot.

“Bring them,” he says to Sterling, nodding at Jared and Jensen.


	8. Chapter 8

Jared and Jensen are hauled to their feet and frogmarched across town. They’re dragged into the looming glass-and-steel headquarters of Morgan Corp and down to a room that Jensen remembers all too well.

The room has a lot of electronic equipment, some medical equipment and several black vinyl gurneys with straps and manacles. Jensen recognizes Dr James Stuart immediately. They knew each other vaguely when Jensen worked out of this building as an intelligence officer and they met again the first time Jensen was reprogrammed. Jensen has never liked him. He’s a smarmy corporate ladder-climber and almost definitely a sociopath.

The other man and woman in the room, Jensen doesn’t recognize. They’re both wearing white lab coats like Stuart though, so he guesses they’re part of the reprogramming team, although why Morgan has decided to reprogram him again, especially after the last failure, is puzzling. And didn’t Morgan outright say he was going to kill them?

Stuart grins, his trademark toothy sneer, and tells the security officers to strap his patients down.

Jensen fights with everything he has in him. He manages to stomp on insteps, knee groins and headbutt faces, but there are too many people holding him, too many people wrestling him onto the gurney, too many people strapping him down. He’s vaguely aware of Jared trying to fight off his own group of security people and a small part of his brain notes that Jared doesn’t appear to be fighting very hard.

When they’re both strapped down, Morgan comes and stands over Jensen, his expression smooth and serene.

“I was going to kill you both,” he says. “But then I figured that was just too easy.” He puts an arm around Stuart. “Dr Stuart and I have cooked up something really fitting for both of you,” Morgan looks at his watch again. “I’ll let him explain it all to you. I have an ambassador to expel from Mars.”

Jensen watches Morgan leave, taking his security team with him.

Dr Stuart begins to fit a skull cap full of wires to Jensen’s head.

“So let me tell you what we’ve got planned for you this time,” Stuart says conversationally, his thin lips twisted and his eyes narrow and beady. The man has resting sneer-face and Jensen remembers wanting to punch the smug out of him the very first time he met Dr James Stuart. That hasn’t changed.

“We’re going to reprogram you both as sex slaves,” Stuart says gleefully. “Fill your minds with memories of being cruelly used since your teen years, and then we’re going to sell you to the slave dungeons on Titan where you’ll be fucked and beaten and otherwise tortured to death within a few short years.” He smiles, lips pressed together and wide eyes filled with cruel delight. “So you see, you still die. It just takes longer and before you go, you’ll think your whole life has been one of pain and misery.” Stuart manages to look supremely happy about this and Jensen glowers and tries to think of something cutting to say.

Before he can, Jared speaks. “Undo all the straps,” he says, and the lab coat who’s been attending to him, does exactly that, freeing Jared’s head, then both of his arms.

“What are you—?” Stuart’s confused question is cut short when Jared uses a freed arm to break the lab coat’s neck.

“Shit. You’re a fucking psychic,” Stuart lunges for the panic button, but Jared reaches out a hand (an unnecessary gesture, but Jared claims it helps him focus his energy) and uses the power of his mind to pin Stuart in place. He calmly undoes the manacles around his feet and climbs off the gurney. The woman by the bank of electronics is frozen in place, whether in fear or because Jared is holding her immobile too, Jensen can’t tell. Jared instructs her to climb onto the gurney he’s just vacated and then he straps her down, before hurriedly unstrapping Jensen.

Dr Stuart takes advantage of his distraction to make another lunge for the panic button. Jensen grabs the nearest thing to hand, which just so happens to be some kind of sharp-edged probe that looks a little like a thigh bone, and stabs it into Stuart’s neck. Arterial blood sprays out sideways making a pretty pattern on the wall and Stuart gurgles and sneers and crumples to the floor.  

Stuart keeps a pistol in his desk drawer and Jensen helps himself to it before they leave. He takes a scalpel too and slips it into the top pocket of his overalls.

There are two guards outside the door and Jared mind-whammies them before they can react to the sudden appearance of the two guys who should be strapped to gurneys right now.

“Which way?” Jared asks Jensen, and Jensen touches his i-band and brings up a holomap of the building.

The one good thing to come out of their capture is the fact that they are now inside the very building they needed to be in, and they got in without having to fight or con their way inside.

They pass a couple of people in the corridors, but no-one whose hackles are raised by a couple of maintenance guys walking purposefully down a hallway.

There are two guards outside the satellite control room and Jared gives them a big friendly, “Hey there, fellas,” and then puts them both in a trance.

Jensen sees beads of sweat running down the side of Jared’s face and when Jared wipes at his nose, his hand comes away bloody.

“Jared?” Jensen says, his voice concern and warning in one.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jared says. “I’m being careful. I’m trying to give us as much time as I can, but I’m conserving my energy too.”

The thing with mind-whammying, as Jared calls it, is that it wears off.  There’s not a single psychic who can make a mind-whammy last for longer than twelve hours and whatever delusions they’ve implanted or memories they’ve tampered with, it won’t last through the subject falling asleep, which seems to act like some kind of brain re-set. The longer Jared makes the delusion or the memory loss last, the more of a toll it takes on him, hence the nose-bleed. At its worst, he can pass out and they really don’t have time for that.

The four staff inside the satellite control room are all unarmed civilians and they’re able to take care of them the old-fashioned way; Jensen points his gun at them and tells them all to move to the back of the room and not to try to be heroes. The staff are all very obedient as they’re tied up and locked inside a large spare parts cupboard.   

“Okay,” Jensen pulls the scalpel from his pocket and hands it to Jared. “Let’s do this.”

He unbuttons his overalls and pulls his arms out, letting the top part drop to the floor. He then undoes a few more buttons until he can get at his hip.

“It’s here,” he says, pointing at the flesh just down from his hipbone.

Jared nods and tells him to turn around and brace himself against the wall. He does as he’s told and a moment later Jared’s hands are on him. Jensen can’t help his sharp intake of breath—Jared’s hands on his ass will never fail to turn him on—and the bite of the scalpel is a welcome distraction.

“Got it,” Jared says, holding up a bloodied chip.

Jensen takes it from him and wipes it off. “Alright,” he says with a grin. “Show time!”

He touches his i-band. “We’re in, Charlie.”

Felicia tells him where to put the chip and talks him through infecting the stand-alone computer system with a virus that will cause the MRA’s footage to play on a continuous loop that none of the Morgan Corp techs will be able to stop. Then she talks him through the process of setting up a broadcast.

“Alright,” she says finally. “We’re set. Go ahead, Jensen. Make history.”

Jensen switches on the system’s i-cam and speaks into it, the camera focused on his eyes only.  “Do not attempt to adjust your set,” he says. “This is an MRA Video bulletin. The cable hack will last as long as we want it to. We cannot be traced, we cannot be stopped and we are the only free voice left on this planet. What you are about to see is conclusive proof the Governor Jeff Morgan and his people cut off the air supply to Venusville today and that they cut off the air supply to Morganville eight months ago, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people whose only crime was to be injured in a mining accident caused by Morgan’s greed and failure to adhere to safety standards. Morgan can’t be allowed to remain Governor of Mars and we are calling for his immediate removal and for charges to be brought against him. Thank you for your attention.”

He starts to broadcast the MRA footage. They have interviews with survivors of Morgan’s attempt to wipe out the people of Venusville, and interviews with the people who the MRA rescued when he cut off Morganville’s air, as well as footage showing that the air supply into Venusville had been deliberately stopped by the control room. It’s damning stuff and not only do they transmit it to Earth, they set it up to broadcast on every holo-screen, every flat-screen and every i-band on Mars.

Jensen lets the satellite control room staff out of the cupboard. “Y’all might want to see this,” he says, and switches on a flat screen monitor.

The security officers outside are still dazed and Jared and Jensen relieve them of their weapons and their uniforms and send them inside to watch the broadcast. Jared’s uniform is far too tight across his shoulders and is going to tear the moment he sees any action. The trousers are ridiculously short too, but they have a big hem, which Jared tears down. Jensen’s counting on things being too chaotic for a senior officer to pull him up for uniform violations.

“Your dad?” Jared says, when he’s as ready as he’s going to be, and Jensen nods.

Things _are_ chaotic.

They narrowly avoid a squad of security officers on their way to the satellite control room. It’s too late for them to do anything anyway; there are probably only four people in the known universe capable of reversing the virus that Felicia had Jensen upload onto the satellite’s computer system, and not a one of them would lift a finger to help Morgan Corp. The only way to knock out the broadcast now is to knock out the satellite. Which Morgan may well do, but the message has already gone out to Earth, and that would only make him look even guiltier.

Everywhere they look there are clumps of people gathered around flatscreens, i-band holos and holo-stages, watching the broadcast with worried expressions. Most people in the Upper Dome didn’t know the full extent of Morgan Corp’s evil, but they didn’t care too much either. So long as they were given plausible explanations for the evil, the profits kept flowing and their lives stayed comfortable and privileged, they were happy. Now that plausible deniability has been thrown out the window, it will be interesting to see how people react.

Jared and Jensen make their way to the Ambassador’s residence, which has been completely trashed; the wall paintings are skewed, the furniture upturned and the sculptures are all smashed.

They don’t find Morgan, but they do find Alan Ackles. He and his staff appear from inside the panic room where they’d locked themselves as soon as they saw Morgan returning with a squad of security officers.

“We’ve been watching your broadcast,” Alan says proudly.

Kim Rhodes and Mama Kane come and hug Jensen hard. “You should’ve seen Morgan,” Kim says. “We were watching him and his guys on the CCTV in the panic room. When he got word about your escape and the broadcast, he lost it. Had a real temper tantrum.”

Jensen figures that explains the smashed sculptures and upturned furniture.

“What’s your plan from here?” Alan asks.

Jensen looks at Jared and shrugs. “Actually,” he says, “this is as far as the plan went. I guess we sneak back home and wait to see what happens.”

Alan shakes his head. “You can’t give Morgan any opportunity to regain control. Things are unstable now; it’s time to really upset the apple cart.”

“How do we do that?” Jared asks.

“Amanda Tapping,” Alan says.

“Who?” Jared asks.

“Director of the Mars Intelligence Agency,” Jensen says. “My former boss.” He turns to his father. “You really think she’d help?”

“Oh yes,” Alan nods. “Morgan may be Governor of Mars, but Amanda’s loyalties lie with the President of the Unified Territories. She’ll be happy to make Morgan the fall guy if it will make the President look better in the eyes of the voters.”

 --

To say that Jeffrey Dean Morgan is surprised when his own security forces arrest him would be something of an understatement. He goes red, then puce and finally white. He splutters and shouts, but gives in rather easily in the end. It’s a little anti-climactic and Jensen is disappointed. He expected the man who came so close to ruining his life to go out with something bigger than a whimper.

Of course, it turns out that Morgan has a backup plan; a couple of security officers who are still loyal to him, and he manages to escape custody and get off-planet within hours of his arrest. Rumor has it that he’s gone to Titan, where his good friend Mark Shepherd is Governor.  If the stories about the slave dungeons of Titan are true, then Mark’s nickname, the King of Hell, is well-deserved.

The security officers in the Pyramid Mine and the MRA both stand down and the mine workers are taken to the New Dome to reunite with their families. Work begins immediately on reattaching the New Dome to the Old Dome.

The power vacuum on Mars that follows Morgan’s departure sees the Upper Dome establishment jockeying for position. The MRA are demanding a seat at the table too and tensions are high. Mars is a mess. Production in the mine halts completely for the first time ever (for real…Morgan had ‘shut down production’ before, but had never _actually_ stopped mining) and there is panic on Earth. Morgan had been shipping only small quantities of turbinium ore to Earth for years, telling everyone that the mine was nearly empty, that excavation costs were expensive, that the process was time consuming. As a result, the Homeworld has virtually no reserves and barely enough turbinium to sustain their power and fuel needs from month to month.

The Upper Dome establishment and the MRA blame each other for the production halt.

As someone with a foot in both worlds, Jensen finds himself doing a lot of politicking. It’s not something he enjoys, but he turns out to be surprisingly good at it. Jared does a lot of background work, reading minds, soothing ruffled feathers, chatting to the Upper Dome servants who are frequently far more forthcoming with the truth than their employers. Through them he discovers Morgan’s very large, very secret stockpile of turbinium ore. Jensen orders the bulk of it shipped to Earth. He’s beyond shocked when the President appoints him interim Governor of Mars.

At least he knows he has the local Ambassador’s backing.

Jensen and Jared move into Morgan’s old residence and Jensen misses their _yali_ like a severed limb.  Morgan’s place is ostentatious and pretentious and nothing about it feels homey. Jared hates it. And they’re barely getting to spend any time together, thanks to the fucking needs of State.

Jensen gets home very late one night after a truly frustrating meeting with the Breathable Air Committee who are throwing up all sorts of obstacles to Jensen’s proposal that oxygen rationing be evenly split between all three Dome levels instead of predominantly borne by the Lower Dome. He’s seriously thinking about taking his gun to the next meeting and he needs Jared to talk him out of it.

Jared is sacked out in their bed, fast asleep. He looks pale, and if the wad of Kleenexes in the trashcan in the bathroom is any indication, he had a killer nose-bleed earlier.

As hard as Jensen’s been working lately, Jared has been working equally as hard. He just hasn’t been getting the same degree of credit that Jensen has, because the establishment, both here on Mars and on Earth, don’t know quite how to deal with Jared. For a start, he’s a mutant. And a psychic. He’s also the male partner of the interim governor and no-one is quite sure how to treat him. They certainly can’t picture him as the First Lady, that’s for sure. Jensen snorts softly to himself. The establishment is still horrendously sexist and homophobic, both problems he’s going to have to deal with sooner rather than later.

Jensen strips down to his shorts and slips quietly into bed beside Jared, who stretches, his eyes blinking open. “Hi,” he says, soft and sleepy.

Jensen puts a hand to his face and cups his cheek. “Hi,” he says. “You okay, man?”

“Tired,” Jared says. He rolls onto his side, facing Jensen, and props his head up on his hand. “But not too tired,” he waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

It’s been far too long since they were able to spend some quality time together. Lately, it’s been all quick and dirty hand jobs as they fall exhausted into bed or, if they’re really lucky, the occasional blow job in the shower. Jensen misses being able to spread Jared out on the bed beneath him and take him to pieces slowly, with fingers and lips and tongue.

Despite his fatigue, Jensen desperately wants to sink his teeth into the flesh of Jared’s broad back, and his dick deep into his tight ass. But. He stifles a yawn and then says, “I saw the kleenexes in the trashcan.” He tries not to make it an accusation.

Jared sighs and rolls onto his back. “Some of these guys have pretty decent blocks in. But,” he hesitates. “I think I’m onto something big. I’m gonna go through all Morgan’s private computer files tomorrow and then…if I’m right, it could change everything.”

“Tell me,” Jensen says, but Jared shakes his head.

“If I’m right,” he says. “If I find what I think I’m going to find.”

 Jensen wants to argue, but decides there are probably better things he could be doing with his lips and tongue. He rolls on top of Jared and is pleased when he finds that Jared is naked. Jared spreads his legs, his eyes heating up and his cock filling rapidly and Jensen tugs his own shorts off with one hand and tries not to knee Jared in the balls while he’s doing it. They both end up giggling and Jensen puts his hand on Jared’s chest to feel the vibrations. It’s been a while since they laughed. It feels good. And the fond way that Jared is looking up at him feels good too.

“I love you,” he says, because apparently he’s turned into a giant sap.

“I know,” Jared says. Well, he is psychic. “I love you too.” He reaches under his pillow and pulls out a pot of salve. “You wanna show me just how much you love me?”

And yeah, Jensen really, really does.

The next morning, there’s a very definite hitch in Jared’s step and he lowers himself carefully to sit at the breakfast table. Jensen can’t help his self-satisfied grin.

“Asshole,” Jared says mildly.

Jensen’s grin only broadens.

He’s in a meeting with the Morgan Corp Board who are demanding compensation for the halt to production and the loss of mining revenue, when Jared pushes his way into the boardroom, with a nervous receptionist running behind him, telling him he can’t go in.

“Come in, Jared,” Jensen glares at the receptionist until she pales and goes away.

Jared stalks to the board table and takes an empty seat. His shoulders and neck are tense, but Jensen thinks you’d have to know Jared really well to appreciate just how angry he is right now.    

Jared throws a file down on the table and looks at the Morgan Corp board members one by one. “Anyone like to guess what’s in that file?” he asks.  

The board members all stare at the table.

“In this file,” Jared says, “is proof that when the first colonists arrived on Mars, Morgan Corp deliberately sabotaged the terra forming equipment and faked its atmospheric test results to discourage future terra forming. I particularly like the line where the CFO at the time,” he stares at the current Chief Financial Officer, “your great, great grandfather, I believe, states in his report, and I quote: ‘The duty we have to our shareholders to maximise their profits far outweighs the duty we have to provide the citizens of Earth with a safe alternative planet.’ I bet the 12.3 million people who died in the ’97 tsunami,” Jared’s tone is brittle, “died happy, knowing your Goddamn profits didn’t suffer!” 

“Look,” Demore Barnes begins in a tone that’s probably supposed to be placating, but fall short by several miles. Barnes is Morgan’s replacement as CEO and he’s still pissed that he didn’t get the Governorship of Mars too, like every other Morgan Corp CEO ever has. The President had learned that lesson though; it’s far too much power to have in the hands of one person. “I know you’re new at this, but what you have to understand—”

And Jensen’s just done. “Get out,” he says, his voice deceptively calm.

Barnes turns to him. “Governor Ackles—”

He shuts up fast when Jensen places a gun on the table. “I said,” Jensen repeats, not even raising his eyes from the table. “Get out.”

There’s shuffling and footsteps and the door opening and closing and then it’s quiet in the room, save for the sound of his own breathing. He looks up to make sure that Jared is still in the room. He is.

“Show me,” he says, and Jared moves to Jensen’s end of the table and shows him everything he’s found. “I think Misha suspected,” Jared says. “That last mission we did, where we found that equipment all shot up? We didn’t understand the implications of what we were seeing, but I think Misha did.”

“Yeah,” Jensen nods. “We should get him in to go over all of this with us and decide how to handle it. By the way, who is Castiel?”

A strange look comes over Jared’s face. “Oh. You know about Castiel?”

Jensen shrugs. “Misha may have mentioned him. He said I wasn’t ready to meet him yet.”

Jared nods.  “Castiel is Misha’s twin, but uh, well, he’s something between a conjoined twin and a parasitic twin. He’s basically a head and two arms growing out of Misha’s front. But he has a brain. He’s actually pretty smart, if a little, uh, odd.”

“Huh,” is the only thing that Jensen can think of to say.

He meets Castiel later that day, when he brings Misha in to discuss how to handle the revelations about Morgan Corp. He appoints Misha to the role of Chief Strategy Adviser and he makes Jared his Chief of Staff. Jensen’s father and Amanda Tapping are also present at the meeting. They approve of Jared’s appointment, but they’re not quite sure what to make of Misha; and to say they’re shocked and horrified by Castiel would be an epic understatement.

Castiel is very like Misha. His eyes are a more vivid blue and his hair is a little messier, but he has the same penetrating stare. He smiles beatifically at Jensen, and when he speaks his voice is deep and gravelly.

“Hello, Dean,” he says.

Jensen’s eyebrows shoot up. “My name’s Jensen.”

“Oh,” Castiel frowns. “My mistake,” he peers intently at Jensen. “I see Dean within you,” he says finally.

Misha just shrugs.

Between the five of them—or six if you include Castiel which Misha, Jensen and Jared do and Alan and Amanda don’t—they thrash out a response to Morgan Corp’s duplicity.

“Okay,” Jensen says, at some sickeningly early hour of the next morning. “We’re happy with this?” he yawns and rubs the grit from his eyes. “We make these changes to Martian law and then I go on the holovision and make this speech? All those in favor?”

Everyone at the table raises a hand.

 --

Jensen has chosen a neat, casual outfit for his public appearance. A light purple button down shirt, worn open at the neck, without a tie, and a pair of tight blue jeans which, according to Jared, make his ass look fantastic. Jensen figures that’s pretty irrelevant though; aside from the moment he walks to the lectern, his ass isn’t going to be on view.

The lectern and the cameras to record his speech have been set up in the Spaceport Arrivals Hall, because it’s the biggest open space they have in the Dome complex.

From the Customs office where he’s waiting, Jensen can hear the constant hubbub of a large crowd and his heart is pounding in his chest. It’s not the public speaking that he’s nervous about; it’s the possibility that his words might trigger a civil war.

Amanda Tapping touches his arm. “They’re ready for you,” she says.

When Jensen steps out of the office, flanked by Tapping, his father, Jared and Misha, the noise level begins to taper off. By the time he’s at the lectern, you could hear a pin drop.

He puts his notes down on the lectern and takes a deep breath.

“Good morning everyone. Thank you for coming. I come before you today with good news. And with bad. Firstly, we have confirmed that Jeffrey Dean Morgan has sought sanctuary on Titan. Efforts are under way to extradite him to face trial for his crimes against the people of Mars. He will also face corporate fraud charges. I won’t go into those in detail here as I feel the charges he faces for killing and trying to kill so many of us here on Mars are of greater importance,” Jensen tries to keep his face from twisting in irritation because the President is far more concerned about the fact that Morgan Corp has been ripping off the government of the Unified Territories for generations and essentially holding them hostage by controlling the supply of turbinium ore. “Suffice to say,” Jensen continues, “there are accounting irregularities in the Morgan Corp books. The full extent of Morgan Corp’s duplicity is, however, only now coming to light. Yesterday, my Chief of Staff, Jared Padalecki, came to me with a very disturbing set of photographs and documents,” he nods at Misha who begins the slide show.

“What you are looking at is the original terra forming equipment that the first colonists brought with them to Mars. You will all be familiar with the story of how it was tragically damaged during the landing and how Morgan Corp scientists subsequently discovered that the original scientific readings obtained prior to colonisation were wrong anyway; that the atmosphere on Mars was too thin to provide adequate protection from the sun’s radiation, even _after_ terra forming. They advised that the equipment was damaged beyond repair and that it wasn’t worth the expense of trying to replace the damaged equipment as the degree to which Mars could be made Earthlike, would still not be sufficient to allow it to sustain life. They recommended that Mars should remain a small mining colony, rather than a potential relocation site for the citizens of Earth who were living in places that were rapidly becoming uninhabitable.”

The crowd is murmuring and Jensen nods. “I can tell that some of you have already recognized the laser blasting marks on the equipment. And yes, your suspicions are correct,” Misha shows the next slide, a Morgan Corp internal memo.

“Morgan Corp deliberately sabotaged the terra forming equipment and falsified their scientific data,” Jensen says gravely, “not because Mars can’t be terra formed, but because they didn’t want it to be terra formed. Could you zoom in on that memo please Misha?” Jensen pauses while Misha does as he’s asked. “I think Morgan Corp can explain it to you themselves.”

Jensen reads the highlighted section of the internal memo, “ _Repeated tests show that the process of terra forming will remove eighty percent of the turbinium ore from the Martian soil and although the remaining twenty percent would provide a yield of a little over 87.6 billion tonnes worth of economically recoverable ore, the reduction in profits would have a significant impact on shareholder returns. As our first duty of care is to our shareholders, it is best that we do everything we can to prevent the terra forming of Mars, no matter how regrettable this may turn out to be for the citizens of Earth who will soon be living in inhospitable zones and who are hoping to relocate before their lives become unsustainable_.”

The outcry is instant and furious and privately, Jensen thinks it’s a lucky thing for them that he’s already had Morgan Corp’s senior executives arrested.

Jensen holds his hands up, palms out and speaks loudly, over the top of the angry rumblings. “People of Mars,” he says, “I said I had good news today too and here it is. Our engineers have examined the old terra forming equipment and it _is_ repairable. We have already started to repair and upgrade it. We will be commencing the process of transforming Mars from a barren, inhospitable red planet into a liveable blue green planet within months. We won’t see it in our lifetimes, but our great, great grandchildren will walk upon the grassy surface of this planet, breathing the air, feeling rain fall on their faces, growing an abundance of crops and not having to worry about air, water or food rationing.”

There is an almighty cheer from the crowd and Jensen smiles briefly.

“We are also revoking Morgan Corp’s one thousand year mining license.  From now on the only party authorized to mine turbinium ore will be the newly formed Mars Collective, which every citizen of Mars automatically has shares in. It will be headed up by Jim Beaver and Steve Williams. We’re not going to be exporting as much turbinium in the future and we don’t expect to make Morgan Corp level profits, but we’ll still make a sizeable income.”

“What does the President on Earth have to say about this?” someone shouts from the crowd.

Jensen shrugs and stares straight into the camera. “I’m sure we’re going to find out in a few hours; this is being broadcast directly to Earth. Hopefully he’ll be pleased that we’re creating a potential sanctuary for the people of Earth here on Mars; we all know that Earth is well overdue for another round of devastating earthquakes and tsunamis and that more of the farmable land is being lost to storm-caused erosion every year. But if Earth is desperate for more turbinium ore than we are willing to provide, there are also Morgan Corp memos saying that they found large deposits of the stuff on Saturn’s moon Rhea, but that the cost of mining it would have a serious impact on profits, so they weren’t going to bother. Now that Mars is no longer an option for them, maybe Morgan Corp will start mining on Rhea. Or maybe someone else will beat them to it,” Jensen shrugs and rubs a hand across his chin. “Or maybe Earth will put some serious funding into renewable energy sources, like the scientific community has been urging them to for hundreds of years. Maybe after all this, they will finally realize that there are things more important than corporate profits and that protecting the corporates and allowing them so much power is never good for the people.”

There’s another huge cheer from the crowd and Jensen is stunned when people start chanting his name. He turns and urges Jared to his side, sliding an arm around his waist and then pulling him close. 

“Couldn’t have done it without this man,” he says. “So I hope no-one’s going to object when we change the marriage laws on Mars,” he leans up to kiss his man and the cheering escalates.         

Jared returns the kiss enthusiastically and Jensen is suddenly very happy that there’s a lectern in front of him, because the kiss has left him painfully hard.

Jared pulls back and smiles down at him proudly. “So,” he says, “we saved the people, we created a better world, you get to rule a planet and you definitely get the boy. What next?”

Jensen is struck by a chilling thought and his face falls. “What if this is all just a dream?” he says. “A Déjà Vu fantasy like the one I paid for?”

Jared laughs, a full, throaty laugh that does interesting things to Jensen’s libido. “Well then,” he whispers, breath hot against Jensen’s ear, “I guess you better take me to bed quick and fuck me good before you wake up.”

He kisses Jensen again, hard and deep, and Jensen decides that if this is a dream, he never, ever wants to wake up.

_The End_

**Author's Note:**

>  **Thank-Yous**  
>  To my artist riverofwind... omigosh...riverofwind works best when under the pressure of a looming deadline...and oh boy, is their best AWESOME!! They worked for something amazing like 48 hours straight and I was blown away by the amazing art that I recieved...well worth the wait! Please go [HERE](http://riverofwind.livejournal.com/5472.html) and give them all the love. They deserve it. :D  
> Many, many thanks, as always, go to my intrepid beta reader 9tiptoes. RL has been ridiculously hectic lately for T lately and yet she has still found the time to beta read my fanfic. Words cannot express my gratitude. Thank you so much, T, for reining in my rampant Australianisms, for helping me construct better sentences and for all your positive feedback and enthusiasm. As always, I tinkered after the final beta read. All remaining mistakes are my own.And a final thank you to Wendy whose hard work and commitment, year-after-year, makes this such a fun, popular and all-round sensational challenge.


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